Steven Universe and the court of Blue Diamond
by DiscordantSymphony
Summary: Steven has been raised by his Dad, a strict matriarch, a stoic woman barely taller than him who can (kinda) see the future, a woman who has serious abandonment issues and bails a lot and a woman who barely talks. A perfectly normal family that has to save the world. Oh, also he's kind of his mom who was an Alien queen.
1. Chapter 1

Steven Universe and the court of Blue Diamond.

Chapter One.

"Heya Steven!"

The sound of his name being called made Steven Universe look up from where he was crouched on the boardwalk, his gaze was out towards the sea and he had a pensive expression on his face. When he saw Sadie Miller from the Big Doughnut approaching however he could not stop the smile.

"Hi Sadie!" He cried out happily as he stood up and glanced at his friend with a bright smile, Sadie was wearing a black jacket over her usual clothes and she had a doughnut bag clenched in her first, the sweet aroma of fried dough drifted from the bag and Steven couldn't deny that aroma was almost irresistible. "Are you heading home for the night?"

"Yeah, just finished closing up. Kinda surprised that I didn't see you in there today." Steven could understand that, he was always in the Big Doughnut when it was open and he would be in it when it was closed but then that would technically speaking be breaking the law all thought his guardians had always said that human laws were too confusing and he shouldn't have to follow them if he didn't want to.

But he didn't want to cause problems for Sadie and Lars and so he had resigned himself to waiting for the days when the Big Doughnut was open. Though if it were up to him favourite place in the entire world aside from Home and his mom's sanctuary.

"Sorry Sadie, I was busy. Holly Blue wanted me to practice trying to use my Gem powers and she said that I had to take it seriously." Steven had never been allowed to accompany anyone on any missions, not until he could his super secret amazing diamond powers.

He had been really trying hard ever since Holly had been asking him to start with his training, he wanted to join the rest of the gems on missions. It kind sucked that he had to spend most of his day waiting for them to come back, not that he didn't like hanging out with Dad or anything cause Dad was great but he wished could go on adventures and save the day just like the rest of the gems did.

"Oh, well. I guess I will see you later, you should head back home soon Steven. It's going to be dark soon. Bye!" Sadie cried as she turned and began to run down the boardwalk. Steven jumped to his feet and waved his hand as the girl ran down the boardwalk away from him.

"Bye Sadie, see you later! Give Lars a hug from me!" He cried out as he watched Sadie diminish into the distance, he glanced towards the sea once again before with a sigh he jumped down on to the beach and ran towards the cliff, running around it to the other part of the beach that was hidden from sight.

Steven saw his quarters, made up of a living rom, his bedroom in the loft of the quarters, his bathroom and his kitchen. He knew that most people would call it a house but to him it had always just been his quarters. His home was the temple and his quarters were just the part of the temple in which he happened to live.

He glanced up at the statue which held his quarters safely in two of her giant hands, she had eight arms but the hands off all but three had long ago broken off. Several of those hands were littered on the beach, though some had long since been carried out by the tide.

Aside from the multiple limbs however, the strangest thing was that the woman had two faces on one head. One on the top which was gazing up into the sky while her lower face was gazing out into sea. The statue almost seemed to be looking out for any oncoming threats from any direction.

He ran up the wooden steps which he could just vaguely remember watching being built on a hot summer day, up to the porch. He opened the door and was about to call out when a slender sharp darted out of the side of his vision and scooped him up into their arms before jumping out of the way of a glob of green fluid landing against the floor of where he was standing.

Steven found himself in the loft of his room, the green glob was eating through the floor of where he had been standing. He looked up at who had saved him and found himself staring up a woman with a blue cone nose with messy hair covering her eyes from view, she was dressed in a light blue body suit and a sheer skirt that sparkled in the light. "Thanks for that Pearl."

The woman nodded with out a word and then gently placed him on to the bed and without a word leaped off of the loft, standing in the middle of the room was a monster with a long worm like body and three heads, each on the size of a microwave with green acid dripping from their jaws, tendrils the size of water hoses were erupting from it's sides and they were tipped with what looked like steel tips.

Pearl raised her hand to the gem on her chest and with a glow of light pulled a glave out of it, she ducked as one of the tendrils swung at her and then with a swing of her long axe took one of the tendrils. Before the severed limb could hit the ground it disappeared in a cloud of pale pink smoke.

There were three others surrounding the creature, the tallest was only half as tall as the Hydra Worm with periwinkle coloured skin and pale lavender hair with side buns that were pointed out like two upside down ice cream cones. She was dressed in a dark blue body suit and a diamond shaped opening on her chest, white puffy gloves on her hands and white heeled boots on her feet. On the back of her head was a teardrop shaped gemstone on the back of her hand and clutched in her hand was a whip handle, the whip it self sparking.

At the back of the creature was a woman that was only an inch or two taller than Steven with powder blue hair that covered her blue face and flowed down to her back which mean it nearly reached down her entire body, she wore a dress that covered her feet and had puffy sleeves.. She had a round gemstone embodied in her hand but she did not seem to have a weapon.

The last woman was shorter than the one with a whip but taller than Pearl, she had cyan skin and was wearing a blue halter top and a long flowing skirt that went down to her knees with messy dark blue hair. Her back was to the kitchen so Steven could not see her gem but he knew it was shaped like a rain drop, she didn't seem to have any weapon either but she didn't look like she needed one.

A hand was placed gently on Steven's head and he looked up into the smiling face of his father. "Heya Stew-Ball. Did you have some fun?" His father was balding and reddening from the sun and he was a littler overweight from not having to do much other than sit around the house all day but he was one of the smartest people that Steven had ever known.

"Heya Dad! Where did that come from?" Steven asked as he pointed down at the monster that the woman with the whip was now reeling back by wrapping her whip around one of it's heads and drawing it back, the woman in the skirt had wrapped two long tendrils made of water around it's other heads.

"Don't know kiddo. Turned up about a few minutes before you turned up." Greg said and then let out a shirk as a glob of acid slipped free and sped towards them, he grabbed Steven and threw them both down to the floor and the glob melted through the glass of the window.

The shortest woman held up her gem and it began to glow and the two watery tendrils froze solid, Pearl raised her spear and silently hurled it into the creature's middle. It let out a harsh shriek and disappeared into a poof of smoke. Once his dad loosened his grip on him Steven shoot up and jumped off of the loft and landed on the sofa that was placed under the loft.

"That was awesome!" Steven cried as he ran over and wrapped his arms around Pearl's legs, a delicate hand came down to ruffle his brown locks. "I wish I could do that, I could've been here to help and could've ordered it to stop attacking you. Or...or ordered it to poof or blasted it with my super secret diamond energy beam."

Steven heard Lapis, the woman dressed in the skirt, mutter "Energy beam?" But he barely heard that over the sharp gasp and he turned to look at Holly Blue Agate who was staring at him with a horrified expression on her face, her quivering hand held in front of her lips.

"My prince!" She cried out in horror as she gazed around the partially melted remains of his quarters. "Oh, there are not words for how sorry I am! It came out of nowhere!" She rounded on the tiniest woman with a furious expression on her face. "Sapphire, are you not supposed to predict future events? Why did you not see this coming?"

Sapphire stared up at Holly Blue with a blank expression, saying nothing watching as Holly grew more and more angry with each second that she didn't speak. She eventually did speak however, her voice not rising above a quiet monotone. "I can not see the future, Holly Blue. I can predict the most likely outcome but I need data and variables to predict the most likely outcome."

Holly let out a grunt before she turned back to Steven with an apologetic expression on her face. "I am so sorry my Prince, we shall have this repaired in just a moment. How did your training go?"

"It didn't, nothing I tried work. Concentrating really hard didn't work, not trying to hard didn't work, doing both didn't work but I didn't really know how to do that and then I got a headache and just sat down for a bit and then Sadie came to talk to me and then I decided to come back here cause it was dark and that's how training went." He said with a tiny frown, frustrated at his lack of progress.

Lapis walked past him and ruffled his hair on her way to the screen door out on the way to the porch. "Don't worry Kid, you'll get the hang of it sooner or later. I'll see you later." She said with a smile that Steven gladly returned as Lapis gingerly stepped around the acid hole in front of the door before opening it and stepping out on to the porch.

"Lazuli, where do you think you are going?" Holly called after her and Lapis turned her head to look at her, a smirk on her face as her gemstone glower and two wings made of water sprouted out of her back, each of them about the size of a longsword and the width of a tractor tyre.

"Going to get some air." And then with a flap of her water wings Lapis was airborne, Steven ran to the window but Lapis was already just a slowly retreating dot in the distance. He stood watching her go until he couldn't see her anyone more and could only see the slowly darkening sky.

Suddenly there was a loud rumble and Steven was terrified that another monster had turned up but when he spun around he didn't see anyone expect for Holly, Sapphire, Pearl and his Dad who was now climbing down the stairs of his loft. With a blush he realised that it was coming from his stomach. "Whoops, kind forgot to eat today."

"Say no more my Prince. Pearl! Your Diamond is hungry, making him something to eat. Make it quick and make it good." Pearl did nothing but fall into a low curtsey before she turned and walked over to the small kitchen, getting a saucepan out of the cupboard as well as some peppers and tomatoes.

"You need any help Pearl?" Greg asked but Holly let out another gasp like he had just suggested stealing candy from a baby or throwing a man with cement shoes of a bridge or doing one right after one another.

"Absolutely not, forgive me. But you are the consort of our beloved and much missed Blue Diamond! I will not allow you to lower yourself to doing a task fit for Pearl, even one who belonged to her grandness. Forgive me Mister Universe, but I will not hear of it." It was clear form Holly's tone that she really was not going to allow Greg to help.

"Holly." Sapphire spoke up and Steven noticed that there was hint of something that sounded like anger as well as something that might have been alarm in her voice. "The creature didn't leave a gem, I've never known a monster have an offspring this large before. My Future Vision suggests that we are dealing with something that can create copies of it's self, I would recommend that we discuss this more in the temple."

"Very well." Holly followed Sapphire to the large cavern at the back of Steven's quarters, stepped around the large circular pad that crossed the wooden floors and the stone floor and then stepped in front of a single door with a golden star emblazoned on it, the star had hollows that suggested something was once set in it but they had long since been removed. Sapphire held up hand and her gem glowed, on the door the golden star glowed and the door opened, though it almost seemed to be resisting the pull.

The two gems stepped through and once the door slid shut after them Greg stepped behind the counter and began to help Pearl cut up some onions. Pearl stopped and turned her head in his direction and if Steven could see her eyes then he would guess she was staring at him. "Greg-

"What Holly doesn't know won't hurt her, and I am not letting you do this on your own. It can be our secret, right Stew-Ball?" Steven nodded with a grin and after a few moments a small smile appeared on Pearl's face as she began to chop the peppers, expertly and thoroughly removing the seeds.

Once all the vegetables had been cut and they had been placed in a saucepan to began to make the sauce and another sauce pan had been filled with paste, Greg told Steven to go and wash up for Dinner. Steven nodded and ran over to the door that lead into the bathroom.

He began to run one of the sink taps but before he put his hands under the water he stopped and gazed into the mirror before he slowly began to pull up his shirt, he looked down and embedded in the soft pink flesh of his stomach was a Blue Diamond, he brushed his fingers over it and felt a jolt.

It didn't hurt but he could feel the power inside of it, power he couldn't reach no matter how hard he tried. Steven let out a sigh and dropped his shirt and went right back to cleaning himself up. He wouldn't worry about it tonight, he would try not to at the very least.

Tonight, all he was going to worry about was not chocking on a meatball.

End of Chapter One.

* * *

 **Welp, this is new.**

 **So I hope that everyone enjoyed this and this AU is of interest to you, Steven is still out loveable goofball but he's been raise by different people and that is going to have an impact. What Blue Diamond's involvement in the Gem War may have been, if that is our Sapphire, what happened to the Gems in the temple door and more questions, raised in that chapter or not, will be answered later down the line.**

 **Please review, favourite and follow. Constructive criticism is always welcome.**

 **With much love,**

 **Doctorwhofan12345.**


	2. Chapter 2

Steven Universe and the court of Blue Diamond.

Chapter Two.

After Steven and Greg had finished their pasta and they both helped Pearl with the washing up, despite the normally quiet and meek gem trying to protest, Steven found himself lying on the floor of his quarters with his legs up in the air, his feet kicking back and forth as his dad sat on the sofa, strumming at his guitar with Pearl sitting quietly next to him.

It was close to Steven's bed time, though Holly Blue had been disgusted at the idea that any of them could enforce a time on him to do something and it had actually been Sapphire who had suggested it and she was the one who had taken to enforcing it, Sapphire and Holly Blue were both still in the temple and there was no sign of Lapis.

Steven found himself wondering where Lapis was always going, she never stayed around long even though she did have a room in the temple just like all of the others did. Well, he assumed that Pearl had a room. He had never seen her go into the temple without any of the others and she was always waiting for him in his room when he came home from a long hard day of walking the town.

When he finally came into his diamond powers maybe he would ask Lapis to tell him where she was always going all the time and if Pearl didn't have quarters in the temple then he would command that she been given some, Pearl deserved that much for always being nice and looking after him and dad like she did.

For now at least, maybe he could draw a picture for her of what her room would actually look like! He jumped too his feet and ran up to the steps to his loft bedroom and quickly gathered people and some crayons, he sat down on his bed and bite his tongue as he stared intently down at the paper as he tried to consider what Pearl would like her room to look like.

Well, it would have to be blue to start with he decided. Pearl was blue and she had served his mother who had been Blue Diamond and she was friends with Holly Blue, Sapphire and Lapis all of whom were blue so it only made sense to him that blue would be her favourite colour.

Nodding at his perfect logic Steven reached out and took out a blue crayon, then he needed to decide what would fill it so he tried to think about what exactly Pearl liked. He was kinda sad to say that he had never really asked Pearl what it was she liked but Steven had known her his entire life, he could totally figure it out.

Well...Pearl liked to cook a lot, she always did it and she never complained about doing so she had to like cooking, she liked to clean up as well and to do the laundry and she always liked to play boardgames like Kitchen Calamity and Battle Boat with him and so he quickly added all these things to the picture.

He gently picked up the picture and held it reverently, it was the best piece of work he had ever done and by anyone's standards it wasn't too shabby but then he realised that it was missing something and he quickly grabbed some more crayons and quickly drew himself and Pearl standing in the middle of the room, holding hand with bright smiles on their faces, before he scooped it back up.

Steven jumped to his feet and was half way down the stairs to show Pearl and his dad the drawing when suddenly there was a massive roar and the entire ground shook, Steven let out a cry as he tumbled off of the stairs but before he could hit the floor Pearl was there, holding him in her arms.

Perfect! Now he could show her the drawing. But before he could draw her attention to it Pearl set him down on the floor and with a frown made her way to the door, stepping around the acid hole in front of it as she stepped outside. Steven frowned and tried to follow her but before he could take a step his dad was there, holding him back and shaking his head.

The door to the temple suddenly jolted open and Sapphire and Holly Blue ran out into his room, they didn't stop but Sapphire shot out a command to Greg that he should keep Steven inside the house as they rushed outside. Steven frowned at that, he was a gem too and he could help!? How else was he supposed to find his powers without them.

With a surge of speed that Steven barely know he possessed he ran for the door, leaping over the acid hole and landing outside on the deck. What he saw caused him to gasp and nearly made him want to run back inside but he stood his ground, he was a gem too. He was a gem too.

He kept repeating that as he ran down the steps to the beach so he could get a better look even as he could hear his dad breathlessly calling for him to come back.

Holly Blue, Sapphire and Pearl were standing on the beach and in front of them was the monster from the house but this one had some differences. The biggest, no pun intended but welcome, was that this one was at least forty feet tall. It's heads were big enough to swallow a city buss, it's tendrils were as long and as thick as those inflatable tube things that his dad had shown him that once stood outside the car wash he had used to own before he had lived with the Gems full time.

The finally difference about this Hydra Worm was that on top of it's middle head was a round, green gemstone.

"Where is Lazuli?" Holly called out as she summoned her weapon, staring up at the monster with what Steven might have thought had been fear if not for the fact that he knew that Holly Blue was never scared of anything, she always managed to beat the monsters away in the end.

"She'll be back soon, but Holly. I think we might have too-" Whatever Sapphire was going to suggest Steven never got to find out as Holly let out a cry of revulsion that almost drowned out the Hydra Worm's roars.

"Absolutely not, I refuse to do that. Do you hear me? I refuse!" Holly's gem glowed again and she pulled another whip out of it and for a heart stopping moment Steven thought that she might actually attack Sapphire, Sapphire clearly thought so as well as she held her hands up and took a step back.

Holly glared at Sapphire but then another roar from the colossal monster seemed to bring her back to her senses as she turned her gaze to it. "We do this the old fashioned way, Pearl, draw it's attention. Sapphire, try and freeze it as much as you can. I'll hang back and wait for an opening."

"What can I do?"

"Well, my prince you can-My prince!?" Holly was so shocked to see him that she didn't see the massive tendril coming swing down at them. If it weren't for Pearl's quick reflexes then the two of would've been made into a Holly Blue and Steven flavoured pancake. Sapphire rushed over to them as Greg ran up as well.

"I thought I asked you to keep Steven inside?" Sapphire hissed and though her voice had not raise there was a clearly steely note in her voice as she turned her head to look at Greg. Greg robbed the back of his sheepishly, looking more scared of the gem that was barely taller than his son then he did off the giant gem monster.

"The kid's faster than he looks." Sapphire shook her head, Holly looked like she was going to have a break down and Pearl simply pointed at Steven and then back up at the house. Greg nodded and scooped Steven up despite his protests, once they had reached the steps Steven could hear the gems charging into battle.

As they reached the deck, before his father could take him back inside Steven leaped free from his grip and ran over to the railing, though he didn't attempt to go back down to the beach as he knew his dad would follow him and he didn't want him getting hurt so he contended himself to watching as the gems kicked some but.

Pearl was doing as Holly had asked her to do, drawing the Hydra Worm's attention as it throw it's tendrils down at her to try and smash her into Pearl Paste. She ducked and danced gracefully and avoided the Worm's blows but sometimes only by a couple of inches either way, her glaive was in her hands and when a tendril landed close to her she tried to slice at it but the skin was too thick for the weapon to puncture or cut through.

Sapphire was hanging back, using her super speed to keep head of the tendrils. She only stopped once or twice to shot a beam of freezing light out of her gem but most times it just seemed to bounce off of the monster. When a ball of acid landed at her feet however she managed to duck back before she was hurting and used her freezing beam to seal one of it's jaws shut, Steven let out a cheer when he saw it even as his dad tried to pull him back inside.

Holly had combined her two whips into one, meshing them together in a glow of light so it could reach the Worm from where she was standing, her super long whip didn't seem to be do much damage however, even the electricity that channelled through it didn't seem to be doing much.

The Hydra Worm was clearly getting irritated, it threw it's middle head back and let out a roar as the gem on top of the head glowed with a sickly green light. Suddenly the entire Worm was glowing with the same light and right next to Sapphire a similar glow was appearing, Steven went to shout out a warning but it wasn't needed as Sapphire turned and ducked away as another Hydra Worm, the same size as the one that had been in the house and like that one had no gem, appeared on the beach.

The big one was still growing and more little ones were suddenly appearing, soon the beach seemed to be infested with the monsters. Three were approaching Holly Blue who was using her whip to try and hold the little ones off like a lion tamer trying to hold back some very, very dangerous lions.

Sapphire was trying to out run three that were right on her tail and Pearl was practically surrounded by them, swinging her glaive at any that came to close to her. All the while the true Worm stood tall above them all and it let out a chocked sound that almost sounded like laughter as it spat acid out of the two mouths that it could still use and swung it's tendrils down at the Gems who were just barely avoiding them as well as the little ones.

Suddenly, two chains made of water burst out of the ocean and wrapped around the long body of the Worm, holding it steady. Four more chains burst out of the ocean and wrapped around some of the Worm's writhing tendrils, holding them as best as they could and Steven cheered and he could hear his dad cheering with him as they both spotted Lapis hovering in the sky.

And just like that, the tide seemed to change. Holly was back to wielding two whips which she used to sent large jolts at the smaller worms, poofing them easily. Sapphire was now chasing the ones that had been chasing her, sending her icy beams at them as they ran and Pearl was slicing through the one that had surrounded her, poofing them like they were nothing as her glaive sliced through their necks and their chests.

But just like that, it all went wrong again at the worm shoot out one of it's free tentacles at Lapis, sizing her around the middle and throwing her face first towards the temple. Steven watched in horror as Lapis tried to flap her wings but she had been thrown to fast and so Lapis collided with the cliff face and limply fell to the beach.

The chains fell away and simply dissolved back into water, the Worm, now completely free once more, swung out with one of it's tendrils in a wide sweeping motion, clearly not caring it if hit it's copies or not. Pearl managed to dodge but Holly Blue and Sapphire weren't as lucky and both were sent flying.

Pearl stood alone but before she could do anything a tendril slammed down on to her, Steven gasped and icy needles stabbed him inside of his stomach but as the tendril was pulled back he felt slightly relived to see that Pearl was trying to get back up to her feet. The feeling did not last long however as the tendril came slamming back down on to her, once it was pulled back another came down on to her and then another and another and another.

Steven was going to be sick, he couldn't watch this. Before he knew what he was going he sized on to the railing and hurled himself over. He could hear his dad screaming his name as he landed and Steven know that he should have been injured falling like that but the fall itself seemed to have happened in slow motion and at the minute he didn't care.

At that moment nothing mattered except getting to Pearl.

As he ran towards her the Worm pulled it's tendril back and raised it up higher than it had ever done it before and Steven got the feeling that this was going to be the finish blow, he could hear people calling at him. His dad, Holly Blue, Sapphire and Lapis who were all trying to get him to go back but he barely heard them.

He jumped in front of Pearl's limp body and held his arms wide, doing his best to shield her from the monster. Staring up at it he spoke calmly. "You aren't going to hurt her, I won't let you."

The monster let out that terrible chocking laughter again and stopped raising's it tendril. The extremity seemed to hang motionless in the air.

"You are not going to hurt Pearl."

The tendril swung down and Steven shut his eyes tight as he heard his Dad, Holly, Sapphire and Lapis screaming his name and Pearl's hand trying to pull him behind her so she would take the worst of the blow.

"YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HURT PEARL!" He screamed as loud as he could as he waited for the blow to land and the pain to come. But the pain never came.

He opened his eyes and his belly felt warm, the entire area seemed to be bathed in a blue light as he looked down and saw that it was coming from his gem. The Hydra seemed to be swaying back and forth, almost like it was in a trance, it's tendrils pulling back and hanging limply at it's sides.

"What?" Lapis asked in disbelief as she staggered forward, her eyes wide in disbelief.

"It can't be." Sapphire said with a voice filled with pure shock as she pulled her hair aside and Steven knew she was trying to see any future where she for saw this?

"My diamond?" Holly asked as she held her hands in front of her mouth, her eyes beginning to water.

"Blue?" His dad asked with tears in his eyes

"Steven?" Pearl whispered.

Steven said nothing as he stared up at the creature, he had done this. He had finally done it! He had learned how to use his Diamond powers! A determined look came on to his face and he quickly pointed his finger at the monster and said in a cool voice. "Poof."

The worm monster did not poof, in fact at that point the light resided into his gem and in a matter of seconds the monster came out of the trance. Steven stared up at it for a moment before the familiar feeling of a thin arm wrapping around his middle and pulling him away from the monster brought him out of his own trance.

"Lapis! Now!" Holly screamed and Lapis nodded as she raised her hands and as her hands raised to the sky and her gem glowed a large bubble of water lifted out of the ocean and hovered over the still slightly confused Worm Hydra for a moment before Lapis let it drop and the monster became socked.

Not wasting a single second Holly rushed forward and lashed out with her electric whip at the puddle that formed at the bottom on the monster's body. It let out a shriek of pain and electricity danced and crackled over it's entire body but it still did not poof.

Lapis was there again however and she used her power to raise what looked like a spiral staircase up into the sky, Sapphire strode forward and used her power to freeze it completely solid. Pearl gave him one last hug before turned and ran for the new ice sculpture in the middle of the beach, running all the way to the top and leaping off it and with a great swing of her glaive the monster disappeared with a great poof.

Pearl landed on the beach with the round green gemstone safe in her hands, a light blue bubble surrounded it before she pressed down on to top of it, making it disappear with a pop. Steven knew that he should be glad that the monster was gone and no one was seriously hurt and he was.

But now it seemed like he had lost everything, he had found out that he did have powers and now he didn't know how to use them and he couldn't command a gem monster to poof if it was attacking them. He let out a heavy sigh and fell on to his behind, tracing his fingers through the sand as he did so.

"What's wrong bud?" His dad asked as Steven heard him approaching.

"It's just...I worked so hard and nothing, then when I finally manage to get something working I mess it all up. As soon as I told the monster too poof nothing worked anymore and it broke out of it's trance." Steven heaved out a heavy sigh. "I just messed it all up."

"Steven." Sapphire spoke calmly and Steven turned to look at her, she hadn't pulled her hair back so Steven could look into her one round eye. "We don't know what you are, there has never been anything like you before and it is doubtful that there ever will be again. We don't know how all of this works yet, but you did not screw up."

"You saved my life Steven." Pearl spoke as she knelt in front of him and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"And that is not nothing." Lapis spoke out with a wide grin.

"I always knew that you could do it my prince, it was just a matter of time." Holly Blue said with her eyes shut and a self assured smirk, as though she had always know that this would happen.

A large hand came down on to his hair and Steven looked up to see his dad smiling down at him. "I am proud of you bud."

Steven felt his eyes burning and he realised that he was probably going to cry when he suddenly remembered, he let out a cry and told them all to stay where they were as he ran for the house and came back out with his drawing. He panted for air as he arrived back outside and stood in front of Pearl. "Do you like it?" He asked as he handed her the drawing.

Pearl stared down at it for a few moments saying nothing but then she surged forward and sized him in a bone crushing hug, Lapis and his dad then joined in with Sapphire following after them with Holly Blue following in at the end though not without grumbling that this was unbecoming behaviour.

Steven sighed as he decided to stay in the centre of the cuddle pile for awhile, this was the life.

End of Chapter Two.

* * *

 **Please follow, favourite and review if you enjoyed this chapter, just a note that some chapters will be based on episodes with their own twists and some will be wholly original ideas that occur do these being different characters.**

 **With much love,**

 **Doctorwhofan12345.**


	3. Chapter 3

Steven Universe and the court of Blue Diamond.

Chapter Three.

A heavy rain had chosen that day to fall down on to Beach City and Steven Universe watched as the fat rain droplets were slowly rolling down the window of his bedroom, with a heavy sigh he fell backwards on to his bed. He was completely board and there was nothing for him to do, during one of the attacks last week one of Lapis's water attacks had gone wild and it had shorted out his TV, meaning he couldn't watch anything nor could he play any of his games.

And he had just gotten a nearly mint copy of Lucile's Estate as well. He turned over on to his stomach so he could look down into the living room, Pearl was the only one in the room at the moment, sitting at the kitchen island with a screwdriver in her hand as she tried to fix her TV for him. It didn't look like it was going so good at the moment as while Pearl's face was usually expressionless there was something that really did look like a frustrated frown on it at the moment.

Lapis had gone flying off somewhere as soon as the storm had hit, Lapis loved to fly in the rain, and Sapphire and Holly Blue were both still inside of the temple doing whatever it was that they did. Sometimes Steven wished he could get in there but no matter what he tried he couldn't get the door to open. Dad wasn't here either, he had gone into town to meet a friend and he had called an hour ago to say that he wasn't going to come back until the rain had stopped as the storm had come out of nowhere and he hadn't taken a coat.

Steven kicked his feet back and forth as he tried to think of what he could do to kill some time, there were a bunch of board games under the cupboard under the stairs but almost all of them needed at least three players. He had some books as well but he had real all of them at least twenty-seven times, at a minimum. He could do some more diamond power training but he didn't know what he could do to train, he couldn't trigger that paralysing power that he had used on the Hydra Worm and he hadn't been able to use any of the other powers that his mother had meant to have.

Steven wondered if his mother had a weapon, Holly and Pearl both had one but Lapis and Sapphire had powers instead. It didn't seem like she had, no one ever mentioned her having one to him and from what Lapis and Holly had told him his mother had always been more likely to let other gems fight for her. She was a Diamond, a leader. She didn't have to fight and she wouldn't unless she had too.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of the temple door opening, Steven jumped out of his bed and ran to the stairs to see if he could get a better look. Both Holly and Sapphire had come out of the temple and Steven smiled so widely that his cheeks began to hurt. This was awesome, there were four of them now! They could play Kitchen Calamity!

Steven leaped off of the stairs and began to dig through the cupboard to find the game, the cupboard was really dusty which really surprised him as Pearl was normally really obsessed with keeping this place clean. As he searched he heard the two gems approaching and both of them we're speaking to one another. "You're certain then?" Holly asked.

"Yes. The signal is weak but it is there." Sapphire spoke but Steven noticed that she seemed to be uncertain about something. "I can't say for uncertain what exactly the signal is coming from but my future vision tells me that the lab is the best bet, we were always going to go back there at some point anyway this is just giving us an actual reason."

"But of course we don't know who the signal is coming from, it could be coming from a-" Holly didn't get to finish as Sapphire interrupted her, Steven could just see her holding up her hand as she spoke.

"I know, I know. But regardless of that the signal is gem in origin and it wasn't there a few days ago. If there is a chance then it is one of us then it's a chance worth taking."

"I imagine your right, very well Sapphire. I will go to the lab and scout it out. I will be back as soon as possible." Steven listened as the clacking of Holly's heeled boots as she approached the Warp Pad.

"Yes, take Steven and Pearl with you." Sapphire's calm voice cut through the quiet room like a glass vase smashing against the floor and the sound of heels clacking against the floor stopped. Steven rapidly turned and around as saw Holly Blue frozen as she was about to step foot on the Warp Pad, her leg held in mid air. Pearl had her head turned to Sapphire, the screwdriver pointing at her direction. Sapphire was standing there like a statue, her hands clasped in front of her dress.

What Sapphire had actually said sunk in to Steven and he ran over to Holly, glancing rapidly between her and Sapphire. Unsure of which one to actually speak too. "I can come!? I can come on a mission!? You mean it!?" This was so cool, what better way to kill his boredom than to go on a mission and kick some monster butt and he would be able to get a lot of practice in with his new powers.

"Sapphire-" Holly Blue and Pearl said at the same time and Holly glared at her and Pearl looked down at the floor before Holly continued to speak. "I am more than capable of handling this on my own, I won't need anything carried on the way back and I can handle any threat so I won't need Pearl. I will not allow our prince to put himself into danger. If you think that I truly need back up then I can just get Lazuli to come with me."

"Lapis isn't here! She went off flying as soon as the storm hit!" Steven cried out happily as he hoped from one foot to the other, bring his hands up to his mouth so he could bite down on his hands so he wouldn't let out a scream of excitement, a practiced response as the last time he had done he had been watching the announcement of the next Inspector Spacetime and when he found it out it was going to be a girl he had screamed for how happy he was.

Sadly, Pearl had thought that he was under attack and that was how Television number 24 had meet it's tragic end, it had served him well and faithfully and it had been laid to rest with full honours. It had been beyond any of their abilities to fix it.

Holly didn't seem as excited as he did about all of this, Pearl didn't either as she was keeping her head bowed and twisting the screwdriver around in her fingers. Didn't they understand how cool that this was going to be?! The three of them could finally go on an adventure together. Sure, it would be better if they could all go on an adventure together but he would be perfectly happy going on adventure with just Holly and Pearl.

Holly still didn't look convince as she looked rapidly between him, Sapphire and Pearl. She closed her eyes and brought up her hand to her mouth to clear her throat. "My prince, forgive me but, while you did well in stopping that gem monster from crushing Pearl into dust, you have not yet gained full control of your powers and until you do, I do not feel comfortable with taking you into danger."

"Holly Blue." Sapphire interrupted and stepped forward, at least Steven assumed that she had stepped, the dress she wore completely covered her legs and she always looked like she was gliding more than she was actually moving, and if Sapphire had legs then he had never seen them before. "I've used my Future Vision, the best outcome is dependent on Steven and Pearl both going with you, please do not argue with me because you are not going to change my mind on this."

Holly looked even more annoyed than she had before but Steven didn't take the time to consider that before he turned and ran to the cupboard under the stairs, he threw it open and began to dig into it. He knew that it was in here somewhere, pushing aside boxes of board games and half broken cases of CDs and photo albums until he finally found what it was that he needed, he sized hold of it and pulled it out and held it up so all could see it.

"TA DA!" Steven called out as the gems examined his treasure. "This will be really helpful on the mission, it could really save us in a sticky situation!"

"My prince. It's a cheeseburger." Holly said as she stared at Steven's prize with an experession that looked like Steven had pulled out something stupid, like a chocolate cake. Pearl and Sapphire were both looking at it with blank expressions and Steven found himself frowning, didn't they understand how awesome this was?

"It's not just a cheeseburger, it's a cheeseburger backpack!" Steven shouted as he held it up even higher than he had done before as he leapt on to the table. The light of the room made the plastic cheese slices glow like they were made of gold, plastic gold.

"Steven. Off the table." Sapphire spoke out and Steven sighed but did as she said, no one ever argued with Sapphire.

"Okay, but seriously. Each individual slice is a pocket! I can carry a ton of stuff in here and I'm sure we can take some stuff that will be helpful on our super secret mission!" Steven said as he imagined himself, Pearl and Holly Blue dressed in slick black cat suits and woolly black hats standing outside the headquarters of an evil corporation like the Parasol Conglomerate from the House of Residing Evil series.

They would all fire their grappling hooks that would latch on the edge of the roof and they would scale the side of the building, except once they were halfway up the side of the building, a spotlight would shine on them and an attack helicopter would rise up and alarms would start to blare and they would have no choice but to break through the window and fight their way to the lobby where they would find themselves surrounded by an army dressed in black bodysuits and they would have no choice but to fight their way out.

But once they got outside the president of the Parasol Conglomerate would be waiting for them outside and he would release his pet Cyborg Zombie T-Rex with Titanium Armour and Plasma Gatling Guns on them. It would be a tough fight, gruelling and it would only get worse as each time they thought that they had finally gotten rid of it would get back up with new abilities and weapons like fire breath and laser eyes and rockets launchers and laying eggs which made little mini versions of itself.

But eventually it would go down and it would stay down and they would catch up to the president of the Conglomerate just as he was about to escape on his secret jetski and live the rest of hid days on some tropical beach. Once they throw him behind bars, there would be a huge award ceremony and they would all get medals and trophies and flower crowns and they would all be screaming their names. "Holly Blue! Pearl! Steven!"

"Steven."

"Steven! Steven!"

"Steven."

"Steven! Steven! Steven!"

"Steven."

"Steven! Steven! Steven-"

"Steven. Snap out of it." Sapphire's calm voice brought him out of his fantasy and he let out a nervous little laugh when he saw Sapphire looking right at him with Holly Blue and Pearl also looking concerned. "I know that you're excited, this is a very important thing for you. But you need to understand that the mission has to come first, the best possible outcome depends on your presence but that doesn't mean that it will come to pass just because you are there. Can you promise me that will you take this seriously?"

Steven was a little taken aback by Sapphire's tone, he didn't think that he had ever heard her ever sounding this serious. At least she had never spoken to him like this before. This mission had to be important and so, he nodded once and put on his serious face. "Don't worry Sapphire, we'll get her done."

Sapphire nodded in returned and glanced back at Pearl and Holly Blue, Pearl nodded silently but Holly let out a sigh. "Very well, if you are certain about this. But I want it down on record that I think this is a very bad idea! My prince, if you are coming then you must do everything I say. Do you understand?" Steven nodded rapidly and followed Holly and Pearl on to the warp pad, after he had quickly taken some essentials with him in his cheeseburger backpack.

Steven was vibrating, he had never warped anywhere before. Maybe he could convince Holly to let him take them back home when the mission was done with. Just as they were about to go however Sapphire spoke up. "Steven. Remember, whatever else you do. Keep the harmony...and remember we love you very much."

Before Steven could even begin to consider what that mean, there was a low hum and a flash of light and they were off on their daring mission!

End of Chapter Three,

* * *

 **Please review, follow and favourite if you enjoyed this chapter. Next one, we will get a better idea of what exactly the mission actually is. We also get a more in depth look at Steven's relationship with Holly Blue and Blue Pearl and their relationship with one another. Thanks for reading!**

 **See ya next chapter!**

 **Love,**

 **Doctorwhofan12345**


	4. Chapter 4

Steven Universe and the court of Blue Diamond.

Chapter Four.

The light from the warp was still stinging at his eyes as it faded away and Steven rubbed at them to try and make them stop, a pair of hands took hold of his and gently pulled them away from his eyes. She was blurrier than normal but he recognised Pearl easily enough. "Try not to rub at them Steven, the stinging will go away soon enough."

"Thanks Pearl." Steven said with a sniff as he turned to look at where they had ended up, a gasp escaping from his mouth before he threw his hands over his mouth to stifle an excited scream at what he saw. There were so high, near the very top of a large mountain with a whole range of mountains spread out before them, when Steven looked down he couldn't see the ground, all he could see was clouds and mist.

They had to be at the top of the world, Steven couldn't see anywhere else in the world being as tall as here. He caught sight of a tiny trickle of a stream which poured down from a ridge higher up near the tip of mountain, he quickly broke away from Pearl and ran over to it, puts his hands in the stream, shivering slightly when he felt the cool water against his skin before he brought his cupped hands up to his mouth so he could drink.

The water was so cold that it made his teeth ache and the back of his throat tingle, a laugh bursting out of him. He ran over to stare down into the valley below, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouted. "Hello!" A thousand echoes rushed back up to meet him and Steven liked to think that there were a thousand Stevens in the valley below, calling up to him.

Then he felt the ground shift underneath his feet and he let out a scream as he began to plummet down, the ground suddenly looking closer than it had been and he did not like it. There were no little villages of Stevens, only long stretches of brown land and rolling hills and great crystal blue lakes that glittered in the light of the pale sun.

It was pretty, in a way but Steven was too busy screaming for his like to really take any of it in. A pair of thin arms wrapped around his waist and he glanced up to see Pearl's face, she held him tight to her chest and extended her arm upward. A thin blue line lashed out and wrapped around her wrist and just like that, Steven felt themselves being flung around and then thrown higher up into the air.

The sky was so blue up here, it was so pretty. For a moment Steven thought about how great it would be if they could stay up here forever, floating above the mountains. They began to float downward and soon enough Steven was vaguely aware that they had fallen back on to solid ground but everything seemed so far away and dream like that he still felt as though he was floating.

A collection of blurry, blue shapes stood in front of his face, it made a bunch of noises which were growing louder and louder but try as he might he couldn't bring the shapes into focus. A blurry shape that was a lighter blue hovered in front of his mouth and something cool trickled down the back of his throat and Steven realised that he was drinking some of the cool water from the stream that he had found earlier.

"Just calm down Steven, drink the rest of this and then take a breath, you're going to be alright. Holly Blue, he's going to be fine, calm down. You're going to give yourself a stress fracture." It was Pearl's voice and after a few moments of sipping at the water from her palm and breathing, the rest of the world came back into focus and everything suddenly seemed a little less scary.

"What happened?" Everything seemed so hard to think about now, he remembered the endless blue and falling but how he had ended up there had completely slipped from his mind. "I was falling, was I falling?"

"Yes, you fell off of a mountain! Oh my prince!" Holly Blue cried as she knelt in front of him and fluttered her hands all over him, like she always did when he had nearly hurt himself. Most times though, it was because he had cut himself on a broken plate or because he had tripped and fell face first on to the boardwalk when he had been running to go and get some fried pieces of heaven from the Big Doughnut.

Steven was ripped from Pearl's arms and he found himself in a hold that could crush stone, he should know he had seen her do it. A downpour of tears struck his forehead as Holly Blue held him even tighter, if that was even possible. "I thought that I had lost you! I thought that-I don't know what Sapphire was thinking and I don't care, I am taking you back to the Temple, isn't safe for you here. You aren't ready!"

"But Holly!" Steven cried out as he tried to wiggle out of her hold but he was as trapped as a worm on a hook, or a turtle on it's back or a fly on a bit of that sticky role tape or some ketchup in a squezy bottle or some peanut butter in a jar. He was that kinda trapped and it really sucked. "Sapphire said that you were going to need me! That the best possible future meant that I had to come!"

"I know she did and I don't care, you are going to go back to the temple and you are going to stay there while Pearl and I go and deal with this." Holly had shuck her head then and carried him over to the Warp Pad despite all of Steven's protests and struggles. Just as Holly was about to put him down on the pad however, Pearl spoke up.

"Holly, you can't take him back. Sapphire said that we were going to need him if we wanted this to go as perfectly as possible. Steven will be more careful from now on and I will keep a close eye on him." Steven didn't think he had ever heard Pearl talk so much, more often than not you would just get a yes or no out of her and when you didn't get that, you only got a hum. "I don't want to be the one to tell Sapphire that we are disobeying her, do you?"

Holly Blue suddenly stilled and Steven was held in mid air in her arms, he frowned when he noticed the look of uncertainty on Holly's face. If he didn't know any better, than he would say that she almost looked scared but that didn't make any sense. What was scary about Sapphire? Nothing was scary about her, that was what. Sure, she sometimes got lost when she was predicting the future and she talked so little that she made Pearl seem like a real chatter box. But that was just Sapphire being Sapphire.

Sapphire played with him whenever she had the time, she was a surprisingly viciously player at Battle Buddies Turbo and she played to win when it came to Kitchen Calamity. There was nothing scary about Sapphire. Steven couldn't ever imagine being afraid of her.

But Holly quickly spun on her feet all the same and carried him away from the Warp Pad and set him down beside Pearl and then kneeled so she was looking into his eyes. "Alright, my Prince. You can stay with us but you need to listen to me. You stay close to us no matter what happens, you do what I say when I say it, and that means if I tell you to run then you run, if I tell you to hide then you hide. Do you understand me?"

Steven put on his serious face and nodded, snapping off a quick salute and Holly sighed before standing up. "Pearl, how far away are we?" As soon as she had answered the question, the gem on Pearl's chest began to glow and a screen was projected from it. Hundreds and hundreds of numbers and words scrolled across the projection too fast for Steven to make any of them out but they soon all vanished to be replaced with what looked like a picture of the mountains.

The circular projection suddenly turned on it's side and the picture turned into a 3D map of the mountain range and suddenly a red light began to flash. "We're not that far, I'd say a five minute walk. The beacon is still transmitting." Pearl spoke quietly while Holly examined the map more closely, after a few moments she nodded and clapped her hands and the projection ended there and then.

"Excellent, then let's not stand here waiting!" Holly turned around and began to walk across the snow covered ground, with Steven following after her and Pearl bringing up the rear. The sun was shinning high above them with no clouds to cover it but even so it did little to warm him against the chilly air of the mountains and he had to rub his arms to try and fight off the chill.

They had to have been walking for at least twenty minutes when Pearl asked them to stop near a large mound of snow, and fallen stones and uprooted trees. It looked like there had been a miniature avalanche. Pearl projected the map again for a few moments and contemplated the blinking red light before shutting off. "It's here, we're right on top of it. Must have been buried when it crashed."

"When what crashed?" Steven answered but he didn't get an answer as Pearl and Holly Blue began to pick up the largest of stones and began to toss them over the side of the mountain, once all the stones were cleared away they stared to pick up the trees as well. It was as easy for them to pick all those up as it had been easy for them to pick him up.

Once all the trees and the stones had been tossed over the side, and Steven really did hope that there was no one down there or they would've been made into pancakes, only the snow was left. Holly and Pearl began to dig and Steven went over to join them, this at the very least he could do. They dug and dug and Steven wished that he had brought some mittens with him.

There was so much of the snow that they would probably be digging for hours when suddenly an idea popped into Steven's head and he quickly shrugged off his backpack and began to dig into it and pulled out a fold out trowel. It wasn't really going to increase the speed of the digging but it would mean that his hands weren't going to be cold while he dug.

He had just tossed a few shovelfuls of snow over his shoulder when the trowel blade hit something metal, the vibrations causing his teeth and bones to shake and he fell backwards and dropped the trowel. Pearl and Holly had stopped their own digging and quickly began to dig where he had been, but not before Holly had picked him up and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

Eventually enough of the snow had been removed that Steven could finally see what they had been digging for, it kinda looked like one of those clear glass capsules that his G.U.Y.S came in only this one was huge, at least as big as a car and made completely of red metal with only a little upside down triangle of glass being the only thing that wasn't metal but Steven couldn't see through it.

Holly Blue hummed and pressed her hand to the metal and then yellow and blue lines of light began to run all over the surface of the thing, sometimes crossing over with one another and overtimes turning away and running in different directions. After a few moments of waiting, the lines of light disappeared and there was a gust of released air as a circle shaped hatch popped open and a ramp extended from it.

If it had been right side up then they probably would have had to walk up the ramp but it was on it's side and thus they had to get on their hands and knees to crawl inside, Steven noticed they neither Pearl or Holly Blue made any efforts to try and get it back right side up even though together they would both probably be strong enough to do so.

It was warmer inside the capsule then it was out in the mountains but it was also pitch black and Steven bumped his head into Holly Blue once he had crawled inside. Light began to shine from both of their gems, almost like flashlights. Steven wished that he could do that but again, ever since the Hydra Worm he hadn't been able to get any of his powers working no matter how hard he had tried.

Luckily, his Dad had always taught him to be prepared and he got an actual flashlight out of his cheeseburger backpack and he added it's beam to theirs. Weirdly, while they couldn't make out most of it the inside of the capsule seemed to be bigger than the outside. Holly Blue and Pearl moved further into the capsule and Steven followed them.

Pearl sat down in a chair in front of a desk and her hands reached out towards what looked like controls. She flicked a few switches and pushed a few buttons and suddenly, so suddenly that Steven had to cover his eyes, the entire room was flooded with light. Holly Blue let out a please hum and Pearl keep working on the console.

"It looks like much of the central core was damaged during the crash but the internal dimensions are still stable, that's a good sign." Pearl reached out with a hand and brushed her fingers over the screen in front of her and Steven let out a gasp as he watched the glass ripple, like it was the surface of a pond. "A lot of the internal data has been lost, but I think I can find a damage report. Yes, here we go. The ship had been clipped by an ion blast from an Enemy vessel, it wasn't a direct hit but the damage was bad enough that if forced them down on to the surface."

"This is a Roving Eye, a scout ship mainly. They weren't used till the final days of the war, there's only one battle that it could have been damaged in and only one side it could have fought for." Holly Blue and Pearl shared a look then, a long one and Steven didn't know what it meant. But what he did know was that even if he asked, he probably wasn't going to get an answer. There was so much that they never said.

Holly broke their eye contact first and she turned her attention on to the computer thing in front of Pearl. "The beacon is still transmitting, that means that whoever crashed here, at least one of them must not have been shattered. Anything that suggested where they might actually have gone to?"

Pearl turned back to the monitor and her fingers reached out to slide into the monitor, her blue hair ruffling in the movement. "There is something, a log entry, a great deal of data was corrupted but I think I might be able to piece enough of it together. One moment." Pearl was silent then as she worked, after a moment she nodded. "I have it."

Suddenly all the monitors inside of the Roving Eye flickered on and a Gem appeared on every single screen, Steven had never seen one like her before. She was short and crimson with her hair red brown hair being sort of cube shaped. She had one eye, her gem was where the other eye show have been and there was a slight crack running down in it, she had a really grumpy looking frown on her face as well.

When she opened her mouth to speak, all that came out was a blast of static and Holly whipped her head around to look at Pearl who then nodded and reached out to the monitor and controls once again. The video started over again and while the Gem's voice was still clogged up with static, they could at least understand most of it now.

"Log Entry 17, date 220202021231352 since the formation of the Great Diamond Authority. Our ship has suffered heavy damage during the battle, captain had poofed but has since reformed." The voice was little more than a growl and Steven didn't think that it was the static that was making her sound like that. "Our engines are heavily damaged and we can not reengage them to re-join the battle."

"We will activate the distress beacon but we aren't just going to sit here and wait, once we were all accounted for and completely formed up we commenced a scan of the surrounding area and we discovered an energy signature that registered as Gem." The static started to come back then and Steven was only able to hear one word out of every ten. "We are going to investigate...facility...Diamonds...traitorous off coloured disgrace...If I could get my hands on her...Ruby signing off."

As soon as she had finished speaking, all of the screens turned to static and Pearl quickly switched them off. She spun around in the seat to look up at Holly Blue, her body was tensed up. "The facility, they went to the research facility and that's the last entry. If they never came back then that means..."

"We don't know what it means, that lab had some of the sturdiest defences on this entire planet. I highly doubt a bunch of low caste warrior gems like Rubies would be able to break through them." Holly sounded like she believed that but Steven thought that she looked kinda nervous, but he was probably just seeing things. Holly Blue was never wrong after all.

"What's the research facility?" He asked and both Holly and Pearl jumped, like they had forgotten he was there and it kinda made him mad. Sapphire had said that it was because of him that everything would turn out great, couldn't they at least try and remember that. "You guys never mentioned it before, I don't think you did at least."

Holly and Pearl shared a glance between them before Holly decided to speak. "Well, my Prince. It was a facility dedicated to research-"

Steven rolled his eyes. "Well I got that far."

"Don't be rude Steven." Pearl replied.

"Pearl don't be rude to your prince." Holly Blue replied, her voice as cutting as a knife and Pearl almost seemed to shrink backwards into her chair. The action made Steven frown and he was about to tell Holly to say sorry to Pearl when she carried on talking. "And you are right my Prince, obviously you would know what a research facility is but it was one of your Mother's, those of us that were loyal to her established several dozen of them all over the planet so that we could research...certain things that were of value to her at the time. This lab was very dear to the Great and Long Lamented Blue Diamond, may the stars burn out before our memories of her begin to fade, she often visited it to conduct some of her own personal research."

"Cool!" Steven's eyes went wide and suddenly he found that the mission was suddenly that much more important than it had been before. If this lab was important to Mom then that meant that they had to get to it, they had to check it out to make sure that everything was okay. Steven couldn't think of anything more important in that moment that making sure all of the stuff that his Mom had worked on was still all right. "What kinda stuff was she doing in there? Le Gasp, was she trying to figure out how to somehow combine puppies and kittens together with turtles to some how make the cutest critter alive while also having the shell of a turtle for defence."

"...No, my Prince. She wasn't working on that but it was something...close, to that. Kind of." Holly spoke in a way that made it clear that it was in no way, shape or form close to what Steven said. Kind of. "It was...it was just important to her, and thus my Prince it is important to us. We haven't been here in a very long time, not since your mother-"

Holly fell quiet, Pearl looked down at her hands and Steven held his arms, looking to the side. He had known what had happened to his Mom, that it was his basically his fault that she was...gone. None of them had ever said that to him, of course. But sometimes, just sometimes, he thought that he could see them just looking at him.

Holly Blue brought her hand up to her mouth and cleared her throat before she continued to speak. "At any rate, we haven't been back here in a very long time. We need to make sure that none of these clods of useless dirt managed to somehow breach one of your mother's precious sanctuaries." Holly then turned her attention on to Pearl. "Pearl, do you still have the route to the lab in your system?"

Pearl nodded and Holly smiled. "Excellent, then lead the way." Pearl nodded again and stood up from the chair and began to make her way towards the hatch, Holly stretched down her hand for Steven to talk and the two of them walked over to the hatch. Holly helping him out through hatch, lifting him up so Pearl could pull him out.

They left the ship where they found it, but Holly did say something thing about maybe coming back and salvaging it and Steven thought that would be so cool! He could just imagine himself with an admiral hat as he, Admiral Steven, set a course out for the stars with First Mate Dad, Second Mate Holly Blue, Navigator Sapphire, Ship Councillor Pearl and Tactical Officer Lapis Lazuli, seeking out new life forms both friendly and not so, becoming best friends with the friendly ones and making the unfriendly ones into friends.

He glanced up at the blue, blue sky and smiled. Yeah, one day. One day.

They followed the trail for awhile, it really narrowed in a couple of places, at one point so much that they had to almost hug the side of the mountain in order to stop themselves from falling off of it. He had to wonder how Mom had been able to mange the trail, Dad had always talked about how huge she was. The path eventually widened out again though and once it had, Steven didn't even realise that he had been holding his breath as they kept going onward.

As they kept walking on and on and on, the path kept widening out and out until eventually it was wide enough that thirty people could walk down it, side to side with their shoulders touching and there was room for even more if they squeezed tight to on another. The path began to head downwards and lead into a small valley, with the walls of the mountain on either side of them.

They walked for at least another hour and the one time that Steven complained that his feet were starting to hurt, Pearl picked him up and began to carry him on her shoulders. He rested his head against the top of hers and let out a hum as his eyes slid shut, the gentle rocking lulling him into drowsiness and he very nearly fell asleep on her shoulders and only the remembrance of how important this mission was kept him awake, though it was hard all the same.

But even though he tried to keep focused on everything in front of him, he was barely able to keep himself awake and everything was hard to focus on and he was slowly spaced out and the second time that he rested his head on top of Pearl's, his eyes did not open. The comfortable darkness welcomed him and he could hear someone singing to him, it wasn't a song that he knew but it comforted him and made him fall even deeper into the dark, he knew that he was safe.

He was gently brought back from the darkness when Pearl set him down and gently shook his shoulder, he smiled up at her and wrapped his arms around her waist in order to have a cuddle and let out a sigh. "That was a really nice song Pearl, why didn't you ever sing that one before?"

Pearl frowned when he looked up at her and then gently brought down her hand to rest on the top of his head, she gently mussed his curls as her frown turned into a slight smile. "I wasn't singing Steven, it was just a dream."

Steven frowned, that didn't make any sense. Yeah, he had fallen asleep but he was sure that he didn't dream. He had heard someone singing, he was sure of that and even if it had just been a dream, why would he dream about a song that he had never heard before? Still, right now they had more important things to do and the mystery dream and the mystery song could wait till later to be solved.

Steven raised his arms into the air and let out a groan as he stretched, a yawn slipping out as well before he turned around. Letting out a gasp as his eyes took in what he saw before him.

It was a pyramid, one of the largest ones he had ever seen and it was completely made out of some sort of black stone, but it was weird cause there didn't seem to be gaps like there would be in a pyramid made of stone blocks, it was completely smooth. The only part of the pyramid that wasn't made of stone was the very tip of it. That was made of clear glass that seemed to be shinning blue in the light of the sun. The most incredible thing though, was that there were four smaller pyramids, all the same size of a large chair floating around the tip of the big pyramid in a circle.

Holly Blue was standing in front of the pyramid, next to a large stone that was slightly taller than she was as studied the construct in front of them. Steven wanted to get a closer look and so he ran towards the pyramid but before he could go any futher than where Holly was standing she reached down and grabbed him the scruff of his neck and pulled him away. "I think not my prince, best to take it slow for a moment. Pearl, can you enter the access code?"

Pearl hummed and she stepped over to another stone which was kinda shaped like a banana, she knelt in front of it and held out her hand and once she had done so a holographic panel appeared in front of her, her long fingers danced elegantly over the panel for a few moments as she entered the code. Suddenly, the panel turned red and there was a shrill beeping and the floating pyramids stopped, not that they fell to earth but more that they simply stopped moving.

Holly frowned and brought her hand up to the back of her head and drew her whip from her gem as she stared up at the stationary pyramids and pushed Steven behind her. "Pearl, enter the right code if you would."

"I did! That was the right code, they must have gotten inside and changed it." Pearl called back from where she was kneeling next to the banana shaped stone and her hands ran over the panel. "I can get us in there, but I will have to hack through the system. The only problem is...the system is aware I entered the wrong code, it's on warning mode right now. If I entered it again, the defences will activate and engage us. The same problem occurs if I start the hack, the system will register the breach and the defences will engage us."

Holly was quiet for a moment as she studded the pyramids and then looked down at Steven before she nodded. "My prince, go and stand by Pearl. Keep her safe while she works." Steven nodded and ran over to kneel next to Pearl, watching intently as she worked. Pearl's hands stilled for a moment before she nodded and input some more commands and a shrill alarm began to sound and didn't stop.

Four hatches slid open simultaneously on each of the four pyramids and from each of those hatches extended a large silver barrels with glowing blue lights all around them that began to flicker on and off in such a rapid way that it made Steven's eyes hurt and his head ache. And then, a flash of light exploded out of one of them and Holly Blue flipped out of the way as the blast of light struck the ground, throwing up stones and dirt into the air.

As soon as Holly landed on the ground she struck out with her whip, electricity already crackling along it. As the whip struck the pyramid though, nothing happened. The floating pyramid didn't even shake and Holly pulled her whip back. Two of the other pyramids rushed past it, blasts of light cracking from their barrels as Holly dodged out of the way.

Steven covered his mouth and gasped as Holly just managed to dodge the last blast, the blast itself blew apart the rock that Holly had been standing in front of. He quickly reached out held on to Pearl. "Pearl, I really kinda think you should maybe hurry it up a little tiny bit." Steven winced as he watched Holly keep dodging the blasts, all four were attacking her now and she was barely keeping out of their way. "Pearl! Please, you've gotta hurry!"

"I am trying Steven, I never thought I would have to hack into this system. The security is very layered." Pearl didn't turn to look at him as she spoke, her fingers just kept running over the holographic screen as Holly Blue kept trying to fight them off. "The system is fighting me at every turn, it's alive and it's learning and I can barely keep up with it!"

Holly had summoned a second whip and leapt into the air with a savage cry, she landed on top of one of the pyramids and it tried to shake her off but Holly held on tight to the bottom of the pyramid as the other three turned their guns on to it. Simultaneously, all three canons fired and Holly Blue managed to jump off just as the blasts connected, blowing the lone pyramid apart.

As soon as Holly hit the ground she merged her two whips into one super long one and wrapped it around one of the big stones on the ground and with a yell she swung the stone up into the air and it hit one of the pyramids so hard that the stone seemed to bend inward, almost like it was made of metal. The pyramid sparked, jolted and then fell to the earth.

Holly turned her one whip back into and wrapped one around one of the pyramids and her other one around the other and with a cry, she swung them into one another which caused them to burst in an explosion of smoke and scrap and sparks. Holly lowered her whips and panted for a moment and Steven let out a cheer, Holly was so cool!

But then, the tip of the pyramid began to shine brighter and Steven realised that it wasn't the sun that was causing it to shine. It was shining all by itself. It grew so bright that Steven had to look away and when he could finally look back, he found himself wishing that he hadn't. There were more of the pyramids, eight more and all of them displayed their weapons.

Holly groaned and raised her weapons, readying herself for what was to come. "Pearl!" She called out as she launched herself at the floating attack drone things.

"I'm trying." Pearl called back as her fingers rapidly danced over the screen.

Holly ducked and dived in between the blasts, one just narrowly missing her. "Pearl!"

"I'm trying." Pearl hissed through gritted teeth, Steven didn't think he had ever seen any of them gems sweat before now but he was seeing it now and for the first time since the Hydra Worm had attacked, he felt really, really scared.

Holly was now hoping from the top of one of the pyramids to the other just in order to stay out of their range of fire, it looked like the trick she had pulled before wasn't working now and as soon as she landed on one it would try and flip itself over to throw her off and thus Holly had to jump to another as soon as landed on one to stop from falling to the ground. "Pearl! Hurry it up already!"

"I! Am! Trying!" Pearl screamed back as her fingers moved so fast that Steven couldn't even see them anymore, they just looked like blue blurs against the screen and Steven felt helpless as he just kept watching and Holly Blue just barely managed to keep slipping out of harm's way again and again and again but with each time, the room for mistakes slipped that little bit tighter.

Then Holly Blue made a mistake, she misjudged how big a jump it was or maybe the pyramid drone managed to move backwards slightly as she was about to land, but instead of landing on the middle of the upside down pyramid, she landed on the rim of it and Holly's eyes widened and she let out a cry as she fell backwards and down to the ground.

Steven cried out as she watched Holly collide with the ground and just lay there as the pyramid drones swopped over head like a flock of very weirdly shaped birds. They flew up high into the sky and two of them broke away and began to swoop down at Holly, their weapons already charging and Steven didn't even notice that he was running until he heard Pearl calling out for him to get back.

But he couldn't, he couldn't let them hurt Holly. Steven shrugged of his backpack and began to dig through the pockets, not even really sure what he was actually looking for. He knew that he had to find something or else Holly would die and so would he. His fingers ran over something, it felt like a string or a cord and he suddenly had an idea that probably wasn't going to work but at least he could say that he tried if nothing else.

Soon he was in front of Holly with his weapon in his hand, he could hear Holly struggling to get up behind him as well as hearing Pearl working even more desperately at the console, screaming at him to get back to where she was. The Pyramids were almost on to them and Steven threw his weapon, pulling the cord as it left his hands.

The inflatable raft expanded in mid air just as the Pyramids weapons were about to fire and it almost seemed to wrap around them suddenly there was an explosion, busting the raft and sending rubber and stone raining down to the ground like it was confetti. Steven let himself feel a moment of pride and allowed himself a grin, it didn't last though as suddenly all the other six Pyramids were swopping down on them with their weapons ready to blast them into pieces.

Holly grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back and into her chest and Steven closed his eyes as he heard them get closer and closer and closer. But suddenly, the shrill alarm that had been going on through all of it stopped and after a few moments, and when he opened his eyes again, Steven Universe realised that he was not dead.

Holly Blue looked about as surprised as he did about the not being dead thing and it took her a couple of moments before he finally let him go. They both turned and saw that the Pyramids were floating in front of them, their guns had been withdrawn back into themselves and their hatches had slid shut once again. After another moment, there was a soft chime and all six pyramids flew up to fly around the tip of the big one.

Pearl came walking up to them then, the holographic panel was in front of her now, being projected from her gemstone and she was still hitting various commands on it. "I told you I was working on it. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, you could've hurried it up a little bit." Holly said before she caused both of her whips to disappear and brought her hand to the back of her head, running her fingers over her gem. "Not cracked, so at least there's that. But what were you thinking? Letting out prince get away from you like that? He's half human, he could have been hurt."

Pearl clasped her hands in front of her and let out a sigh, Steven frowned and was about to speak up but Pearl spoke before he could. "You're right Holly Blue, I'm sorry. I'll make sure that he won't put himself in harm's way again."

Holly closed her eyes and nodded. "Yes, very well then. You shut the defences down and that's the important thing. Now, can you get us inside? I think we have wasted more than enough time out here. I want to get in there and find out how much damage those foolish grunts have done and find if there might be anything of value."

Pearl nodded and looked down at the holographic panel once again, she let out a sigh after a few moments of examining it. "This might take me awhile, the door controls are on a different sever to the automated defences. I'll get started right now but it might take me awhile." Holly sighed and turned and walked over to the remains of all of the pyramids and began to pick through them and Steven went over to help her, giving Pearl space to work.

Most of the rubble was too damaged to be used but from the six broken pyramids that recovered six small gemstones, all different colours and different shapes and Holly quickly bubbled them and sent them back to the temple. Once they had done that, Holly took him over to a small cluster of rocks and made him recite all of the caste of warrior class gems, including the shock troop sub-caste that had been his homework.

Once he had reached Jaspers, Pearl called out to them from where she was working and there was a hiss of air and a large hatch on the large pyramid slide open, sending out a gust of cold air that made Steven rub his arms to try and keep the chill away. "I've done it." Pearl said with a smile, it wasn't a big smile but when Pearl smiled you noticed. "And the internal defences are on the same server as the external, they should be deactivated."

"Should?" Holly asked, and she did not sound happy at all.

"I'll keep an eye on them, just in case."

Holly nodded. "All right then, let's us go. My prince, stay behind me if you would. Pearl, bring up the rear." And just like that, they were soon descending into the dark with the only light coming from the gemstones of Holly and Pearl, the light of day slowly fading away as they descended deeper and deeper still into the depths.

End of Chapter Four.

* * *

 **I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter, I've decide that in terms of story some of these will be adaptations of various episodes in this verse which will be expanded on and would be too big for just one chapter to be read comfortably I believe. With that said, the next chapter should be the end of this arc of the story.**

 **If you enjoyed it, please leave a review, a follow and a favourite.**

 **With much love,**

 **DiscordantSymphony.**


	5. Chapter 5

Steven Universe and the court of Blue Diamond.

Chapter Five

The stairway seemed to go on forever and ever and ever as they made their way down it, Steven really couldn't see much as Holly was was in the lead of them and Holly was really tall so it was hard to see around her. Holly was also moving pretty fast down the stairway as well, she wasn't running exactly but she was really focused on getting down the steps as fast as she could and Steven could barely keep up with her with his shorter legs.

Holly also had her whip out, ready to strike at any bad guys that might want to hurt them. Steven didn't have to look back at Pearl to know that she had her glaive out as well. Steven knew that he was safe with them, that they would always keep him safe and he was always going to be glad for that but at the same time he wanted to be able to see what was going on as well.

Eventually, the stairs came to an end and three of them found themselves on a large walkway that seemed to be suspended in thin air and which lead to a large green circular platform which was floating as well. Below them was a lack of crystal clear water which splashed against the sheer black stone walls every now and again. Steven tried to peek over the edge but Pearl urged him onward as Holly Blue moved on to the platform.

Holly cupped her chin with her hand and then nodded to herself as she glanced around the platform, Steven couldn't really see anything. The platform was completely bare and aside from the walkway which lead back to the stairs they had climbed the platform itself was something of a dead end, there were no other openings in the walls expect the one they had come through, the rest of the walls were smooth as smooth could be.

But Holly didn't seem at all concerned with that, she looked as though she had been expecting this. Another moment passed, and then Holly claped her hands together, her eyes tightly shut with a smile on her face. "Let us move on, the mechanisms all still seem to be intact at any rate. Pearl, access the system and get us moving. Checking the primary labs should be our first move I think."

Pearl said nothing, which wasn't that unususal if Steven was going to be honest. Pearl could talk but she often chose not too, and when she did talk it was often only one or two words unless it was something that needed more words to be explained. Or unless she was scared, he still remembered the look on her face as she had tried to get those weird floating pyramid things to stop attacking Holly Blue.

Pearl silently made her way into the middle of the platform and stood there silently for a moment, as still as a statue. Then, she slowly lifted her hands up to her gem and a soft blue light began to come from within her gemstone. A projection of a screen came out of her gem then and Pearl reached up her hand to bring her fingers over the screen, Steven watched as Pearl worked.

What looked like schematics of the building they were standing in flashed across the screen in a matter of seconds, then a weird symbol that Steven had never seen before which showed a white triangle on top, with a yellow and pink triangle on the bottom. But before he could ask any questions about it, they symbol had disappeared just as quickly schematics had done.

Finally, another schematic came on to the screen and Steven could tell that it was a schematic of the room they standing in right now. Pearl's gemstone glowed again, on this time the colour was an emerald green. A low thrum of a sound filled the room and something began to lift from the water below, it was another walkway which connected itself between the wall and the platform.

Then, a chime filled the room. A low grumble of stone sliding against stone and a hatch the same size as the hatch they had come through opened in the wall. Holly clapped her hands once again as Pearl's gem stopped glowing and the screen disappered into nothingness. "Excellent, let us get going then. My Prince, be sure to stay well behind me. We have no idea what might be waiting for us inside of there, Pearl, continue to keep an eye on the defences and make sure that the Prince is kept safe.!

Pearl said nothing but she did give a nod and them seemed to have satisfied Holly Blue as she started to make her way across the walkway, Steven followed after her and Pearl followed after him. There were no stairs on the otherside of the hatch, just a much longer corridor that stretched on further into the darkness. Steven wondered how long it had been since anyone had ever been down here.

But with each step they took further into the darkness, Steven noticed that it seemed to be getting lighter and lighter. Soon, the passageway was almost as bright as the boardwalk of Beach City was on a winter's morning. It was warmer than that in the air though, but it was a dry sort of heat and kind of uncomfortable as well. It was weird, considering how could it had been outside.

As they kept walking, the passageway began to widen out before them. Enough so that Steven thought that every single person in all of Beach City could probably walk side by side and still not spill over the sides of the walkway. At the end of the passageway, Steven cast a thought to how long they had been walking for, two large doors stood waiting for them, a glowling panel waited at the side of them.

Holly turned back to look at Pearl who nodded and quickly placed her glave back in her gem before she walked past Steven and Holly and place her hand on the panel. For a few moments, nothing happened. And then, the doors swung open.

The room on the otherside was like something out of the House of Residing Evil series, it was large and cicular with large glass tubes mounted on the walls which were large enough to hold a person, on the other side of the room from the doors they walked through was a smaller door that was about as tall as Holly was. One of the glass tanks was shattered, thin yellow glass was scarted on the floor and some sort of liquid was scattered on the floor. Steven wondered if they would find diaries and notes of the people that worked here, lamenting how they had played with forces they couldn't understand and they had brought their downfall on themselves.

Holly Blue walked over to one of the tubes that wasn't broken, the same yellow liquid that was splashed on the floor was also in the tube. Holly rested her hand on the glass and let out a hum. "Some of this equipment might still be useable for us, if the main computer system is still working then we might be able to get some of the data and make proper use of it."

Holly cast a glance around the room and nodded. "Doesn't seem like any of the staff managed to avoid being affected by the blast, they would've shown themselves by now if so. I say we should make our way to the computer core. Pearl, opens the next access hatch." Pearl nodded and walked over to the door and began to interact with the access panel.

As Pearl worked, a growling sound made Steven jump and cry out and Holly and Pearl turned to him, ready to strike out with their weapons but nothing was attacking Steven and Steven himself had no idea where the noise had come from, he glanced around rapidly before the noise started up again. After a moment and with a flushed face, Steven rubbed the back of his head and spoke. "Heh, sorry. I kinda forget to had something to eat this morning."

Holly Blue looked shocked for a moment and turned on Pearl, glaring at her and Steven knew she was going to start yelling at Pearl if he didn't intervene. "It wasn't Pearl's fault! I wasn't hungry earlier and she was busy trying to fix my TV after Lapis-I mean after I broke my TV by...looking at it too hard." He said with a nervous grin.

Holly Blue stared at him for a moment before she nodded. "As you say my Prince, sadly I am afraid that we can not turn back just yet. Will you be able to hold on till we are finished here?"

"No problem, I packed some snacks." Steven smiled as he unshrugged his cheesebuger backpack and unziped it, hunting around for the snacks he had packed earlier. Holly turned back to the tube on the wall while Pearl worked on the door.

Another growl filled the air and Steven smiled as he patted his belly. "Don't worry little buddy, you'll be filled soon enough." He reached into the backpack and pulled out a bag of Chaaaaps, an apple. a bag of cheese poofs and a carton of apple juice. He had just pulled open the bag of chaps when the growling started again, he must be a lot hungrier than he thought, it was really loud.

Almost like his belly was right by his ear.

It wasn't his belly, was it?

Steven turned then and his eyesight was filled with something horrible, the thing couldn't be much bigger than he was. That did not make it any less terrifying, it was spiky all over and it was blood red and where it's eyes should have been were only small pits filled with flames and a small red gemstone was dead center in it's chest and when it's clawed hands came down and clasped on his shoulders, Steven screamed.

The thin blue line of Holly's whip wrapped around the thing's middle and it was riped away from him, Holly let out a cry of rage as she used the whip to throw the monster into the wall. The creature roared in anger and rage before it jumped on to the table and lunged at Holly and before Steven could cry out or reach into his backpack for something he could use to help her, Holly spun and brought her leg up, meeting the creature's lunge with a kick to the face.

Pearl had abandoned the door and had summoned back her glaive and ran over to join Holly in the fight, before either of them could do anything however the creature screamed in the faces before leaping on the table once again and from there it lept up to the ceiling, sinking it's claws into it like it was made of mash potatos and scurried across it, bursting through a vent while dodging being snared by Holly's whip and scurring away.

Holly frowned and crossed her arms. "Well then, this location is compromised and not safe. Pearl, I want you to take the Prince back to the warp and get him back to the temple. I'll wait here and when you get back we can countinue on with the mission."

Pearl glanced down at him for a moment before she glanced back at Holly and down at him again, Steven could tell she was trying to figure out what to do. After a few moments of that Pearl held out her hand for him to take, as familar a gesture he had ever known. She had done it a thousand times before, every single time they crossed a road together.

Steven had never rejected it before, he jumped away from Pearl and ran over to Holly. "No! Sapphire said that I had to be here! She said that me being here was the only way that this would turn out okay!"

Holly was about to speak but Pearl beat her to it, her voice was soft as ever but there was a hint of something else in there as well. "Steven, Sapphire can only see possiblities. Not the future, no one can see THE future. And while the best possibility might hinge on you being here, that doesn't mean it is the only possibility that could wind up happening. You could be hurt if you come with us."

"And you can both be hurt if I go!" Steven cried. "I'm not going! If I go back, then we all go back."

Holly and Pearl glanced at one another.

"Stop pouting, it is unbecoming of a prince." Holly said as she carried him, very unpouting, under her arm back through the passageway back towards the platform, Pearl following silently behind them.

Steven said nothing.

As Pearl was interacting with the hologram again in order to get the access hatch back to the surface open, Holly placed him down on the platform. Steven crossed his arms and stared at the walls before he let out a sigh and glanced back up at Holly. "What about what we came here for? And what about that thing that attacked us, what was it?"

Holly was quiet before she knelt down and placed her hand on his shoulder. "My prince, there are things that you must know but your mother made me promise that I would only tell you when you we're ready. Since the great and wise Blue Diamond is...gone. it is up to us to determine when you are ready for such knowledge. And at the moment, I do not think you are ready."

"All I shall say for the moment, is that you are not to concern yourself with this facility anymore. Pearl and I shall return for the data and to clear out this..,infestation at a later date, with Sapphire and Lazuli." Holly patted the top of his head before turning back to look at Pearl. "Pearl, any chance you have the access hatch open yet or am I expecting too much?"

"I'm almost there, thankfully opening it from the inside is not quite so hard as opening it from the outside. Just give me one moment, I want to be sure that we do not trip any nasty surprises on our way out." As Pearl talked Steven sat down at the edge of the platform and stared down at the water below, a frown on his face. He didn't understand any of this, anything at all it seemed like most times.

He wished his mom was here, she was meant to be the best gem out of all of them. She would know what to tell him.

Something warm and wet fell on his shoulder and when Steven put his hand on his shoulder and pulled it back, his hand was wet. Steven looked up and very quickly found that he wished he hadn't.

It was the same creature as before, but it had found friends. Four of them, all identical except for the placement of their gemstones. One had a gemstone on it's shoulder, another on it's knee, another over it's eye and another that he couldn't see so he had to guess it was on the palm of the creature which he couldn't see do to it's claws being embeded in the ceiling. All five of them let out a shriek and dropped down on to the platform.

Holly was fast, scooping him up and putting him near Pearl even as the creatures had only just gotten to their feet, Holly snapped her whip at any that got too close to them. Pearl swung her glaive down at the one with the gem where it's eyeball should have been before it caught it with it's claws and refused to let go, Pearl being unable to pull her glaive free from the monster's hold.

Steven knew he had to help, he dug through his backpack and pulled out a squeeze bottle of water and prayed it at the eyeball one's face. It let go and Pearl was quick to sieze the opening, bringing her long axe down on the monster. The creature just managed to duck out of the way but only just. The four identical monsters that were surrounding Holly were getting frustrated, none of them able to get close to her while she was armed with her electro-whip so they had to fall back as well.

The five monsters snarled and barked at one another and Steven realised they were speaking to one another and was about to point that out to Holly and Pearl when all five of them grabbed each other's arms, all of them disappearing into flashes of light, melding into one huge mass of light before the mass began to take a familar looking shape.

Said shape looked like exactly like one of the monsters that had been just been standing there, only much bigger and each of the indivdual gems were scatter over the body in the same places they had been on the five smaller monsters. When it roared in their faces, it was deafening. It raised it's huge arms and brought them down, Holly dodged to the left and Pearl scooped him up before dodging to the right.

The monster turned on him and Pearl and took a single step towards them before Holly's whip wrapped around it's wrist, crackling with electricity. The monster glanced down at the whip, flexed it's wrist and snapped it like it was dental floss. Pearl lunched herself as the monster, her glaive coming up and down on to the monster's hide but the loud clanging sound made it clear that it hadn't made much of an effect.

So then. It was down to him.

Steven reached into his cheeseburger backpack one last time, wrapped his hand around the first thing he felt and picked it up and tossed it at the monster.

Master of Ceremonies Bear Bear bounced off the monster's hide like nothing. The monster kicked at Steven in retaliation and Steven just managed to stumble back out of the way, but also sadly he managed to stumble off the edge of the platform, plummeting to the water below.

He just heard Pearl and Holly screaming out his name before he was submerged in water, he was turned upside down and it was so dark and cold and he had no idea which way was up and he tried to scream but then water flooded into his lungs.

Moments later, or perhaps hundreds of hours he couldn't tell, a pair of arms wrapped around his waste and he found himself looking into a face that had Holly Blue and Pearl's eyes. The world turned dark again seconds later.

When he woke up again, he was laying in the middle of the platform with Pearl leaning over him. Holly was standing near the edge of the platform, looking down into the water. "What happened?"

"It doesn't matter Steven, we handled it." Pearl spoke and Holly turned to look at him, the look on her face was...Steven had never seen anything like it before. For a moment he thought it was hate and disgust but then it turned into concern and love and then the next second it was the worst sadness he had ever seen in his entire life.

"Let's just go." Holly marched over to the stairs and Pearl nodded, picking Steven up and following her.

It was a long and quiet walk back to the Warp Pad.

When they got back to the temple, Sapphire was waiting for them. Holly didn't say anything to her, all she did was scoff and turn on her heels and walked into the temple, the door shuddering open and then slamming shut behind her.

Pearl put him down on the sofa, got a heater out of the cupboard under the stairs and set herself the take of making him some hot chocolate and getting him a blanket as well. Steven glanced at Sapphire when she sat down next to him on the sofa. "You said me being there was needed for the best possible outcome, you said I needed to keep the harmony."

"I did, and the best possible outcome isn't always happy. Trust me, this could've been much worse. And sometimes, you can keep the harmony even without meaning too." Sapphire looked at him, and gave him one of those stares that he knew was looking right through him which was quite an accomplishment considering that her hair was always covering her eyes. "Do you also remember that I said we love you very much, and you should always remember that."

Steven nodded.

"Good, cause if you hadn't you wouldn't be here right now. Holly will be fine, she just needs some time alone."

"Okay, but what happened? It's not the first time I've been in danger, it's not the first time she's had to save me. What's so different about this time?"

Sapphire was quiet, more so than usual. Then she spoke. "You're hot chocolate's going to be too warm, remember to blow on it." That was all the small blue gem had for him, she jumped off of the sofa and made her way over to the temple door, humming a song that he knew Sapphire liked under her breath as she went.

And when the hot chocolate did come, it was too hot. Just as Sapphire said it would.

End of Chapter Five.

* * *

 **Another chapter done and dusted, I hope you liked it.**

 **If so, please leave a review, a follow and a favourite.**

 **With a lot of love,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


	6. Chapter 6

Steven Universe and the court of Blue Diamond.

Chapter Six

Was there anything more beautiful in this entire world than the small bits of fried perfection that were fry bits? Steven could say for certain that he was sure that there was not. He popped one into his mouth and chewed on it, delighting as the saltiness and oil of the delicious half a fry flooded into his mouth and overtook all of his senses, well, really just taste but still.

"Uh, Steven?" Peedee Fryman spoke as he leaned on the serving counter of the Fry Shack, his dark eyes narrowing in mild annoyance as he held his hand out towards his friend. "I know you love them and I know they aren't really on the menu but you still got to pay for them, fork it over."

Steven, slight annoyed that his voyage into salty heaven had been disturbed by such a small concern as monetary reimbursement, merely sighed as he dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a crumpled five dollar bill which he then handed to Peedee before resuming his course of destruction on the helpless, but oh so delicious fry bits.

Once the bits were all safely inside of his stomach Steven leaned back against the counter and stared out across the beach towards the sea and let out a sigh of satisfaction as the waves lapped at the beach and the bright sun shone so high above them and coated the entire boardwalk in it's golden light. "Ah Peedee, this is the life is it not? What could be better than simply sitting down and enjoying the sun?"

"Not being at work." Peedee spoke with a roll of his eyes. "Steven, buddy. I love ya a lot but you're holding up the line." He said as he gestured to the long line that had formed behind Steven as he had placed his off menu order and had eaten his fry bits in front of the shack, to say that the people in the line looked more than a little irritated would be an understatement. "So, in the spirit of that love, could you kindly get lost?"

"Ah, yeah. Sorry everyone. Got a little bit carried away." Steven said with a apologetic smile as he pushed himself off from the counter and walked off up the board walk, throwing a wave back to Peedee as he went.

Now, he had planned as he walked to head back to his room and maybe take a nap for the rest of the day when his eyes drifted away from the mountain and turned to the beautiful sign that hung above the Big Doughnut, which was itself a big doughnut which Steven had to guess was why it was called that which was odd that he never really put that together before now, and decided maybe he would get a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles before headed home.

Lucky for him, there wasn't a line inside of the shop and even luckier, it was Lars at the counter. He had a pair of headphones in his ears and his head was bobbing up and down and his eyes were screwed shut as he moved violently from left to right in a series movements that could have been called a dance.

"Hi Lars!" Steven called happily as he walked up to the counter with his hand up in greeting, Lars didn't respond as he spoke and instead kept moving and tapping his fingers against the counter as he danced. "I said hi Lars!"

Still nothing. So Steven rested his head on the counter and waited for Lars to be done, and he waited and he waited and he waited and he waited and he waited and he went to the ice cream freezer to go and get a Cookie Cat only to then remember that they had been discontinued and that he would have to get a Lion Licker instead and after a moment of questioning everything that he had ever believed in, he with great regret took the Lion Licker and carried it back over to the counter.

Lars looked no closer to being done than he had before so Steven put some more money on the counter and ripped off the wrapper of the Lion Licker and set about giving himself up to fate as he he took his first lick of the ice cream treat that might look like a lion if you squinted at it in a dark room. It wasn't that the taste was bad, per say, Steven just hated poor craftsmanship.

The ice cream was almost completely gone when the bell above the door of the store rang out and an annoyed cry went up into the air. "Are you serious?!" Sadie growled as she stormed up, throwing a glance at Steven as she went. "Sorry about this Steven."

"No prob Bob." He said as Sadie reached out and ripped the headphones out of Lars's phone which caused the older boy to jerk back and his eyes to snap open in a fierce glare which Steven was kinda sure was just how Lars face looked all of the time.

"Hey! What's the big idea!?"

"I told you to watch the store while I went for a Doctor's appointment, can't you ever just do one thing that I ask you to do? Just once!?" Sadie looked angrier than Steven had ever seen her before which was kinda weird, he had seen her be kinda annoyed at Lars before whenever he didn't do what she had asked him to do sure but this wasn't annoyance, this was anger and it just seemed...wrong, somehow.

Lars seemed surprised as well but it didn't last that long as his own anger came up to meet Sadie's and on Lars the anger was very familiar to him and so Steven took a slight step back. "What's the problem, you were only gone like twenty minutes and no one came in while you were gone anyway."

"One, how could you know that? Your eyes were shut and you had your headphones in. Two, you're wrong because Steven is standing right there!" Sadie cried as she gestured at Steven which caused Lars to look at him.

"Hi Lars!"

"Oh for-He probably only just got there, I promise Sads, I closed my eyes for like half a second. Right Steven, you only just got here, right?" Lars said with a smile that for some reason looked really painful and Sadie narrow her eyes at him once again before she turned her own gaze at Steven, on the hunt for even the slightest lie.

"Uhhhh...yeah! I totally only just got here like, a few seconds before you did Sadie!" Steven shut his eyes, shook his head and tutted. "Honestly Sadie, didn't you see me coming in from outside?"

Sadie did not look convinced before Lars put an expression of perfect innocence on her face and Steven matched it with one of his own and it soon became clear that this was not a war she was going to win. "Fine, whatever. What did you want to order Steven?"

"Well, my fair lady Sadie, I would like three chocolate covered double fried doughnuts if you please. Hold the sprinkles."

"But of course good sir Steven." Sadie said with a smile as she fell into a low bow which Steven of course returned, as Sadie turned and saw to his doughnut needs Steven held out his arms towards Lars while smiling brightly.

"Ugh, dude, what are you doing?"

"Waiting for my hug Lars?"

"And why I am going to hug you?"

"Cause I just lied to Sadie for you?"

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have lied to her cause it's never going to happen."

"Aw man."

Sadie came back to the counter to find a Lars with his headphones back in and a Steven pouting with his arms crossed under his chin. "Here ya go bud." She spoke and Steven grinned before he took the bag which held the perfect chocolate covered treasures within which might be the only thing in the world that might be better than fry bits.

Before they could get down and get the payment for these treasures out of the way, the bell above the door rang once again and Steven turned and grinned once he saw who it was. "Lapis!" He cried as he threw himself at her and threw his arms around her legs, the bag of doughnuts left temporarily abandoned on the counter while the more important matter of hugging Lapis took over all other priorities.

"Heya little man." Lapis said with a soft little smile as she patted down Steven's dark curls before gently pulling herself away from him and walked over to the coffee machine in the corner and poured herself a cup of it and took a sip. Steven knew that none of the gems needed to eat or to drink but that didn't mean that they couldn't and Lapis in particular really liked the taste of coffee

Lapis walked over to the counter and dropped a few coins on to the counter, most of the Gems didn't bother with money and Steven had no idea where Lapis kept finding her own. It was clearly good enough for the Big Doughnut at least as Sadie took the money and placed it into the cash machine. "Thank you for choosing the Big Doughnut for all your fried dough, or in this case coffee, needs."

"What did you say?" Lars asked as he moved one of the headphones he was wearing off of his ear and opened his eyes, and then he dropped his phone once he saw Lapis and he hardly seemed to care at all. "HelloimLarscanIgetyouanythingrightnowallyouneedtodoisaskiloveyou."

"Um, I'm good. Thanks Lars." Lapis said as she turned around and walked back to Steven while drinking her coffee, behind her Lars was reaching out and looked like he was trying to say something else but couldn't get the words out and Sadie...Sadie looked angry again and turned back around and muttered something about checking out the storeroom for something.

Lapis walked out of the Big Doughnut still drinking her coffee and Steven hurried after her as the tall deep blue gem sat down on the boardwalk near the railing, her long blue legs hanging over the golden sand as she stared out towards the deep blue sea that stretched endlessly towards the horizon.

Steven sat down next to her and stared up at her with his dark eyes widened in amazement. "You are so cool."

"I am, aren't I?" Lapis said with a smirk as she drank from her cup of coffee once again. "Why am I so cool again, I mean, we've established that I am always cool but what has brought this revelation on to you, young Universe?"

Steven honestly didn't know the answer to that, Lapis was always cool. She always seemed to fit in where she went and she talked to everyone she met and she could fly, which was a whole other level of cool and Steven didn't know why she was cool, she just was. Water was wet, snow was cold, birds flew, fish swam, the sun was hot, fry bits were perfect and Lapis was cool. It was just the way that it was. "I don't know, you just are."

"Sounds about right to me." Lapis said with a soft smirk on her face before she threw her empty coffee cup into the trash can a little further down the board walk without bothering to look. "So, what you got planned for the rest of the day little man?"

"Well, I just had some fry bits and I got some doughnuts so I guess I'm just going to head back home...But we could hang out within one another instead!" Steven exclaimed with a grin as he jumped to his feet with his eyes shinning bright. "It's been ages since we've actually hung out together and that is a crime! Let's do something."

"Sure, why not?" Lapis said with a grin as she stood up and stretched her limbs and Steven had to wonder if she had really had to that, Holly Blue had taught him that the Gem's physical forms weren't exactly real, well, it wasn't that they weren't real but they weren't organic. Their bodies were made of light, like a hologram but with mass.

Lapis had been there that day and had teased Holly that she had a massive amount of mass and Holly had growled at her and told her to get lost, well, that was what Dad had told him she had said because before she had been able to say anything Steven's dad came up and covered his ears before she had been able to say anything but Steven had certainly seen Holly screaming something and Lapis had laughed without a care in the world as she walked out of the house, stood on the balcony and took to the skies.

It must be so awesome to be able to fly, Steven wondered if Mom had been able to fly. He had always asked the others about the powers that she had but they never told him what they were, that his Mother had wanted him to find them for himself at his own pace. Well, that was great for Mom but Steven wanted to know what he could expect but none of them had told him, not even Pearl.

That thought dimmed his mood slightly but not enough to stop him from smiling as he grabbed Lapis's hand as he jumped from foot to foot. "Taking me flying with you!" He shouted and Lapis's eyes widened slightly for a moment before she chuckled and summoned up her water wings, each one one stretching out proudly from her gemstone.

"Hop on little man!" If it was even possible, Steven's eyes grew wider and a whoop of victory escaped his mouth as the both of them took to the air and, at least for the moment, left Beach City behind.

And as they flew away, neither noticed a little girl in a flowing dress and large book in her hands staring up with wide eyes as vanished on to the horizon.

End of Chapter Six

* * *

 **Another chapter done and dusted, sorry for the wait everyone but yeah, these early chapters are going to be about flushing out Steven's relationships with the other Gems. Lapis here is basically Steven's aloof, cool big sister who doesn't much care about anything at all but she does have a massive soft spot for Steven himself.**

 **Anywho, I hope you enjoyed and please consider leaving a review, a follow and a favorite.**

 **Lots of love, and fry bits,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


	7. Chapter 7

Steven Universe and the Court of Blue Diamond.

Chapter Seven

Steven didn't think that he had ever seen the ocean so blue before as he did when he was riding on Lapis's back with the sun shinning down on it. It was deep and so blue that it sorta reminded him of the color of Holly Blue's gem. And Steven could see his reflection in it, his own dark brown eyes staring back up at him and his long wavy hair moving in the breeze as they flew past.

This was so cool, he tightened his hold around Lapis's neck slightly and adjusted himself to make sure that he wouldn't slip off of her back and spoke with a wide grin. "This is so cool! Can we go a little faster though? Cause in one of my cartoons, Speedful Sally and the Slow Patrol, an excellent example of retropost mordenism in animation by the way."

"What's that mean?" Lapis asked and even though Steven couldn't see her face he was fairly sure that she was rolling her eyes, it was just something about the tone of her voice that reminded him of how she would always sound when she did roll them.

"Oh, I don't know. It was just what something someone else said about it on the internet." Steven said with a casual shrug of his shoulders. "But the important thing is that in this amazing piece of animation genius, it is often depicted that the titular Sally is running so fast that her cheeks and eyelids would peel back. Can we go faster and see if that actually happens?"

"Are you sure about that? It sounds like it would be pretty painful and it would probably make Holly Blue really upset." Lapis was quiet for a few moments then and then spoke again. "On the other hand it would probably really make her upset so let's do it. Hang on little man!" Lapis yelled and Steven let out a whoop of delight as Lapis stretched out her wings and soared up so high before she dived bomb towards the water.

Steven whooped and screamed and laughed all at once as they plummeted towards the water and for a moment he thought they might rush through the water but just as they were about to hit the water Lapis pulled up just enough for them to glide over the water and soon both of them were laughing as the day rushed around them, enjoying the fun of just being with one another.

After what seemed like hours of playing together, soaring high up into the air and diving back down, Lapis conjured a giant watery hand out of the ocean for her to sit on while Steven sat on her lap and ran her fingers through his hair while she hummed a song. Steven didn't know what the song was but he knew that he had heard both Pearl and Sapphire sing it before when they thought that no one was listening to them.

No one told him what the song was or what it was about, whenever he asked they just got this far away look on their face like they never understood the question and then they told him that they hadn't been singing any song and that he must have been imagining it. He didn't know why he wasn't telling them but he also knew that Lapis would just get that same faraway look in her eyes and say that she hadn't been singing anything.

Steven let out a sigh and he tilted his head back and he opened in his when Lapis pressed her lips to his forehead and blew a massive raspberry. "Hey! Gross!" Steven said with a laugh as he pulled his head away from her and rubbed at his forehead, rubbing away the splatter and wondered for a minute if the spit was was made of light just like the rest of Lapis. "What did you do that for?"

"Felt like it." Lapis said with a grin. "And you looked way, way too serious for a moment on what is meant to be a day of fun. So, come on then, what's going on in that weird head of yours, eh Universe?"

"My head is not weird!" Steven said with a grin of his own. "And it's nothing important, you're right. This is suppose to be a fun day with just us so let's focus up and do something fun! Come on, you've been around a lot, thousands and thousands of years right? You must've seen a ton of cool stuff that most people don't even know about! Show me something amazing! Show me something even the others don't know about!"

Lapis stared down at him for a long moment and for a moment Steven thought that he must have said something wrong and that Lapis would take him back tot Beach City but the moment passed before Steven could ask Lapis if she was alright and she was grinning down at him, her eyes as bright as stars. "You got it little man, I've got the perfect place I can show you! But, you have to promise not to tell Pearl or Sapphire and definitely not Holly Blue, she would flip and not in a good way. You can tell your Dad, I guess. It will be just another weird magical thing to him and Greg really does not like to talk about that, at all."

Steven had noticed that, which was kinda odd when you stopped to think that he lived in a house that constantly had magic and a lot of other weird things going on in it but that wasn't entirely his choice. Holly Blue refused to let him move out, his Dad had offered to do so plenty of times in the past so the Gems could focus on giving him all the training he would need but Holly wouldn't hear of it. He had been married to Mom, or as Holly Blue liked to put it, he had been their beloved Blue Diamond's most worthy consort and that was a place of high honor and they would not allow him to live on his own, without their protection or the respect he was due.

Dad knew that it wasn't a fight that he was going to win so he stopped trying to fight it but he did insist that he wasn't guarded by one of them at all the time which Holly had tried to do, thankfully for Dad both Lapis and Sapphire had both refused to be his bodyguard and Pearl would've just gone away the first time that Dad asked her to.

The hand fell back into the ocean and for a moment Steven thought he was going to plunge back into the water but Lapis was still holding him tightly and he could hear the flapping noise that her wings made. "Well, come on little man, do you promise not to tell anyone about this place or do we need to head back to the city?"

"I promise I won't tell anyone at all! It'll be our secret! We will be the only two members of our secret club which will be dedicated to the secret that we share." Steven let out an excited gasped and put his hands on his cheeks. "We're going to be the secret team! No, a team has to be at least three people. The Secret Partners!"

"The Secret Partners." Lapis said with a smile as she carried him further up into the sky and then threw him higher into the air while she spun around so that when Steven landed on her he wound up back on her back with his arms around her neck and Lapis set off forward and Steven grinned as the world became a blue blur beneath him.

He didn't know for how long they had been flying but he was fairly certain that he must have fallen asleep at one point because the sky had been a bright blue the last time he had checked but when he looked up now it was a light peach in color. He wasn't sure where Lapis was taking him but wherever they were going had to be on the other side of the world with how far they'd been traveling.

There was something in the distance then, a little black dot with something shinning at the bottom. As Lapis flew closer and closer to it, the bigger it got. It was a tower, a massive black tower stretching out into the sky from the middle of a massive whirlpool. "Wow." It was all that Steven found himself capable of saying at such a sight.

"Hey, look who's finally awake?" Lapis spoke as they circled the tower, Steven looked down at the whirlpool and saw that it was glowing somehow, like it wasn't a whirlpool made of water but made of light and Steven felt something pulling at him, literally pulling at him like as though someone had grabbed him by the front of his shirt and was trying to pull him down, off of Lapis and into the water and soon Steven found he couldn't fight it and he was falling, down and down and down...

"Whoa!" Lapis grabbed Steven back the back of his shirt and strained as her wings began flap and Steven sweated as he tried to catch his breath, he could still feel something pulling at him but the higher they got the less the pull seemed to tug at them. Soon enough they had reached the top of the tower and the tug there had been had completely gone. "Sorry about that little man, I forgot about the gravity trap. It's meant to keep intruders out but it started to malfunction a while back, sucks anyone down now."

"Don't worry, I'm fine." Steven said as he leapt out of Lapis's arms and landed the floor of the tower, it was flat and there was a square hole on the floor which looked like it lead deeper inside of the tower and across the surface was a small podium that looked like it could hold something. "What is this place anyway?"

"This is the Lunar Sea Spire." Lapis said with a smile, her eyes getting a nostalgic look to them and a small smile formed on her face. "It was one of my favorite places to come, back in the day. Gems used to come here to relax, to have some fun, to study and to dance. It was a great place and it was one of your Mom's."

"Mom came here?" Steven asked, unable to stop himself from bouncing up and down. He was always ready to hear anything about his Mother, Holly Blue was always ready to tell him but it was mainly always the same stuff about how great Blue Diamond was and Steven was sure that what Holly told him was all true but he wanted to know about more than that, he wanted to know if she liked ice cream and watching the rain fall as much as he did and if she liked to sing like he did. He wanted to know his Mom.

"Came here? No, she built here." Lapis gestured with her arms in a wide arc, clearly trying to gesture to the whole tower. "This place was one of the first places whose construction she oversaw when she came to Earth and it was always one of her favorites, whenever she needed to get away from everything or when she needed to think something over this was the first place she would always come to. It was her sanctuary, she used to say."

"Wow." Steven whispered in awe as he considered everything Lapis had said. "So, why can't I tell the others about us coming here? Do they not know that this place exists or something? Were you and Mom the only ones who knew about this place? Oh my gosh, were you guys the OG Secret Partners!?"

"No." Lapis said with a laugh. "No, the others knew that this place existed and they've all been here before it's just that-" Before Lapis could explain a sound like a thunder clap echoed out around them, only it didn't seem to be coming from the sky. It seemed to be come from below them. Steven frowned and wandered over to the edge of the platform and looked down.

For a moment he didn't see anything, only the side of the spire and some shafts of light coming out of the water walls that the gravity trap had made and landing on the side of the tower. But then, the cracking noise started again and Steven gasped when he saw a crack form in the side of the tower and a chunk of wall coming loose before it fell out and fell down towards the void below.

But it never reached it. It could only have been falling for half a second when a massive watery arm shot out of the water wall and caught the piece of wall in it's hand. The watery arm stretched upwards till it reached the place where it had broken away from and placed it back in, the arm holding it in place. Steven glanced over his shoulder to look at Lapis to see that she had had her arm raised and stretched out.

Steven turned his glance back down to see that the arm hadn't pulled back into the water, Lapis was using it to hold the broken part of the tower in place and Steven gasped when he took a closer look at the other shafts of light that were coming out of the wall of water near the base of the tower. They weren't shafts of light at all, they were more watery hands. All pressing against the surface of the tower to clearly try and stop it from coming apart any further.

The sound of soft footsteps made him turn around and he saw Lapis smiling at him, her arm had fallen and had now joined her other one on resting against her chest. "Not bad, huh?"

"Are you keeping this entire place together?" Steven asked he glanced back down over the edge. "Doesn't that tire you out at all? I mean, you have to be always keeping those arms in place, right?"

"Ah, don't worry about me." Lapis said with a grin and a dismissive wave of her hand, as if Steven said that she was worried because she had tripped over and not because she was trying to keep an entire building from falling down all by herself. "Sure, it's a little extra effort but I could move all the Earth's water and make something out of that and hold it for weeks without it causing me any strain, this is nothing?"

"Then why don't you want the others to know about it?" Steven asked and Lapis frowned. "This is why, isn't it? You don't want the others to know about this place cause you don't want them to know that you're the one holding it up. That is it? Isn't it?"

Lapis stared at him for a moment, and for the first time that Steven could remember Lapis almost looked mad at him. But the look passed as soon as it appeared and she let out a chuckle, thought it was more bitter than some of her other laugh's. "I always knew that you were way too smart for your own good, you know that? Come here, sit down." Lapis said and lead him over to the edge where they both sat down, their legs dangling down.

"Holly...overreacts and Sapphire worries too much, I'm not doing anything wrong by keeping this place up or anything but if they knew I was still using my power to keep this place up then they would just make me stop because they are worried I'd cracked under the pressure or something like that. I just don't want to worry them, okay?"

"Okay?" Steven said, not entirely sure if it was okay at all. He didn't like the idea that his family was keeping secrets from one another, sure Lapis said that there was nothing to worry about but if that was true then why would she need to keep it a secret in the first place? "So, what should we do now that were here?"

Lapis grinned and jumped to her feet and offered Steven out her hand to hold which Steven quickly took and Lapis lead him over to the hole in the roof and helped him down the stairs. "I am going to show you something so amazing, your tiny little head is going to blow."

It was a short jog down the stairs, which Steven was fairly certain that no civilized society would ever consider exercise to be fun, until they arrived at chamber with a river of water cutting it in half, it flowed over to the side of the room where a massive whole over took much of the wall, he had to guess Lapis hadn't been able to find the stone for that. Steven was about to ask how they were going to get past that when Lapis scooped him up and flew him over to the other side.

As they descended deeper into the spire, a question popped into Steven's mind. "So, you don't want to tell the others cause you don't want to worry about them putting too much strain on you but maybe they could help you to fix this place up? It could be like a project for all of us to do together, Peedee told me that he and his dad made a tree house in their old place before they moved to Beach City, maybe this could be my tree house? My giant in the middle of a whirlpool house?"

"There's really nothing we can, the materials that the tower needs...some of them aren't native to Earth and the rest are really rare and the others are really busy at the moment, it's no big deal. I can hold it up." Lapis sighed as she stepped over a broken statue that laid scattered on the floor, it's features had been worn away and one of it's arms had broken off and Steven could see no sign of it. "It sucks we don't have that statue anymore, that would fix it."

Lapis caught him staring blankly at her, she smiled and shook her head. "Sorry, you're such a smart kid sometimes I forget that you haven't been around as long as the rest of us." Something that might have been sadness flashed in her eyes for a moment, but as soon as Steven thought he saw it, it was gone. "You saw that podium thing on the roof when we landed? Well, it's for a statue. It only looks like a statue, it's actually this data storage device thing that only looks like a statue."

Another set of stairs waited for them as Lapis continued to speak. "It's got a program inside of it that would communicate with the spire's main computer and would have it run a repair program, the spire would take minerals from the ocean and use it to generate materials to fix all of the damage, this place would look as good as new in seconds."

"Cool! So, what happened to the statue? Could we find it?" Maybe they could ask Pearl to help them find it, Pearl was great at finding things. To be fair, she kinda had to be since Steven kept losing everything. He remembered one time when all of the gems had gone out on a mission and Dad had gone out for a walk and Steven had lost MC Bear Bear.

He had turned the entirety of his room upside down and he hadn't been able to find the master of ceremonies, Pearl had found him in a matter of seconds once she had gotten. She would be able to find this statue thing, someone had probably left it in the cupboard under the stairs in his room like he had left his bear in there, it was where most lost things seemed to end up.

"No, we wouldn't be able to find it." Lapis said as she picked him up and carried him over a missing step, a frown on her face as she saw more damage on the inside of the tower. "It was lost a few thousand years back, there was a...a disagreement. And the statue got taken from us. We don't know where they would have put it."

Steven wanted to ask who "they" were but before he could even open his mouth Lapis hurried down the steps and Steven had to hurry in order to keep up with her, a wide open area with columns stretching up into the air was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs but Lapis didn't seem like she wanted take any of it in and instead hurried over to where another set of stairs, Steven couldn't help but let out a groan when he saw that, leading further down.

He hurried after and thankfully the stairs were not that long and they soon arrived at what Steven had to assume was the ground floor of the Spire, he saw that there were some holes on the wall on this level as well but these seemed like they were meant to be here as they looked cleanly carved into the stone instead of being from the result of damage, this must have been how people would get in here normally.

Lapis hummed and then turned away from the holes and walked deeper into the tower and then knelt on to the floor and rested her hands on the floor. Lapis's gem shone with a soft blue light which spread from her back to her hands and thin blue lines ran across the surface and a small hatch opened in the floor and Steven was caught between feeling so excited about a secret hatch in a secret tower and despair once he noticed that it meant once again more stairs.

It was dark going beneath the surface but Lapis's gem glowed much brighter this time and Steven was able to see where he was going well enough. Something cold and wet fell on Steven's head and he nearly jumped out of his skin but when it happened again and again he realized what it was, they must have gone underneath the surface of the water.

He had kinda wished that he had brought a coat with him now, it was never normally that cold in Beach City and so normally he didn't wear them but this wasn't Beach City and he had been kinda chilly since they had gotten here. Once they were home maybe Sapphire would make him some hot chocolate, he knew that Pearl would do it for him if he asked her to but Sapphire made the best hot chocolate in the whole wide world.

It was smooth and rich and always had just the right amount of whip cream and marshmallows and it always came to him the perfect temperature, ready to drink as soon as he got it. Sapphire was normally too busy doing...whatever she did in her room all day, to make it for him but maybe she would make it to day. He hoped so.

The stairs seemed longer than all of the others put together and Steven felt an ache growing in his legs and his eyes felt heavier and heavier as they went further and further down. The stairs soon came to an end but Steven let out a whine when he felt water flood into his shoes, there must be a leak somewhere. As Steven felt his socks growing wet inside of his shoes, he found himself wishing that he had brought brought some thicker boots and extra pair of socks with him.

Lapis hurried down the passageway and Steven followed after her, thankfully the passageway wasn't so long but the water did rise the further they got down the hall, from just coming up over his feet to just below his knees. The passageway widened out as they carried on and finally they reached the end of it where it opened into what seemed like a large arena.

There were round circles of stone pressing against the walls which reminded Steven a lot of the coliseum that he had seen once when he had been watching a show about history, it must have been for people to sit down. In the middle of the room there was a massive pool of water that took up the entire floor, stopping only where the stone seats began.

Lapis picked him up and flew him to the highest ring of stone and set him down upon it. He was still kind of chilly, but he had to say that he was glad to be out of the water. "You stay up here, we don't want you falling down into the ocean and you've got the best seat in the house." Lapis said with a smile as she hopped down to the water pool.

She stretched her hands up over her head and her gem glowed with light once again, she crossed her arms over her chest and stepped on to the water and then walked into the exact middle of the room. The world grew still and Steven held his breath while he kept his eyes on Lapis, waiting to see what it was that she would do.

Lapis made a gentle motion with her hand, so small and so subtle that Steven barely noticed it, and something began to rise out of the water. It was just a blank imprint of a person, made out of water. It had a head, arms and legs but no other features other than that. Lapis waved her other arm and over a dozen other of the same blank imprints rose out of the water.

Another wave of her arms and then all of the water dolls gained their features, eyes and hair and a teardrop shaped gemstone on their backs. They all looked like Lapis. It was cool, but Steven was about to ask what the point of it was when Lapis could have done this at any point when she was around any source of water when the music started.

It was soft and sweet and sad and Lapis gently began to move with it, spinning in circles with her arms raised over her her head and her hands locked together. About half of the water dolls bent their heads and lowered their arms before they backed up to the stone circles. The rest of Lapis's clones moved closer to the real Lapis, their arms opening as if to hug her.

Lapis pushed her arms out from her sides in an almost violent motion and the watery clones hurried backward in a circle, the clones moving right while the other half a dozen clones were moving in a circle in the other direction. One inner circle, one outer circle with Lapis spinning in the middle of it all, like the center of a giant eye or a giant mechanism.

One of the water dolls from the inner circle broke out from following her duplicates and offered her hand to Lapis, who moved backward and the clone followed her. The clone offered her hand once again and Lapis took it this time and both began to dance to together, their hands and fingers intertwined. They moved back and forward and back.

They spun around the room together, covering the entirety of it and then the watery clone returned to her place while Lapis took the hands of another clone and began to dance with them. She did the same with every single clone, dancing across the entirety of the room and once the last clone had taken back her place, Lapis waved her arm and the clones lost all feature and form and became merely blobs of water which floated upward and joined together to become a massive blob of water hovering over the arena.

Lapis bowed and the massive blob burst and all of the water fell around her like a soft rain fall as the music finally came to a soft end. The silence that was finally broken was done so when Steven jumped up and down, whooping and cheering all of the while. "That was so totally awesome!"

Lapis grinned and summoned her wings up and flew to where Steven was, but before she could sit down or do anything else Steven rushed forward and threw his arms around her legs and grinned up at her, stars in his eyes once again. "That was the coolest thing that I ever seen! Did you used to dance here a lot!? Is this what you used to do before you meet Mom?!"

"No." Lapis laughed as she patted Steven's curls down. "I was part of a late arrival terraforming unit but some other Lapis's were part of your mom's court but they were off-uh, they were of a different cut than us, their powers weren't as strong so your Mom built this arena for them. So they could dance and entertain instead doing what we could do. I always thought they were so graceful, always wished that I could do what they did but then I realized that the whole point of what we were doing with your Mom was that we could all do what we wanted, so we started to practice."

Wow, that was so nice of his mom. Steven was going to ask another question when suddenly he felt a tingling at the back of his throat. Instead of words, all that came out was a fit of coughing. When he stopped and pulled his hand away from his mouth, Pearl always reminded him to cover his mouth when he coughed, he saw that it was covered in plghm. "Ugh." He groaned, and his voice sounded whine, like his nose was blocked.

"Oh, that doesn't sound good." Lapis said as she rested her palm on his forehead, holding it there for a few moments before she scooped him up like he was a baby and held him close. "Come on little man, let's get you home."

But he didn't want to go home, he wanted to stay here for a bit longer and talk to Lapis some more about his Mom and ask her more questions about the spire and what had happened to the statue but when he opened his mouth all that came out was another cough. Lapis smiled, conjured up her wings and carried him out of the chamber.

He had only blinked for a moment but soon they were outside, the sky that had been peach colored when they arrived here but now it was dark blue with a hundred little pinpricks of light scattered about it. Steven twisted himself around in Lapis's arms as she carried him away and he caught sight of the sea spire, shrinking back down to the dot it had been when they had first appeared, a few shaft of lights the only thing stopping from falling apart entirely.

Steven had closed his eyes again and he drifted in and out of sleep so he could not have said for how long they had been flying but soon enough it seemed that they were back at the Beach House, the warm light of his room shinning on them through the screen door was almost comforting and nearly lulled him back to sleep.

Holly Blue saw that did not happen, she pushed open the screen door so forcefully that Lapis needed to step back even as she met her enraged gaze. Holly Blue stared at her, then down to Steven than up at Lapis again and exploded. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!? WE HAVEN'T HEARD ANYTHING FROM YOU IN ALMOST TWELVE HOURS! GREG HAS HAD SEVERAL PANIC ATTACKS AND I NEEDED TO PUT HIM TO SLEEP!"

As an aside Steven really hoped that didn't mean what it sounded like and all she meant was that she let him freak out, gave him some aspirin, made him some tea and sent him to bed but to be honest he was too tired and his head was too achy for him to really ask. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a cough which was then followed up by a sneeze.

"...He's sick!" Holly screamed and Pearl took that moment to step out from behind Holly and took Steven from Lapis's arms, carrying him into his room and up the stairs to his bedroom. Pearl took off his clothes, dressed him in his banana yellow pajamas and put some socks on his feet before she tucked him into bed and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

A few moments later there was another kiss to his forehead and when he opened his eyes, he saw that a mug of hot chocolate, complete with the perfect amount of whip cream and marshmallows was waiting for him. He was too tired to take more than a sip of it, but the warmth that sip and the gesture left in his chest, was more than enough to lull him into sleep.

Chapter Seven

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 **Whoop, another chapter done.**

 **I hope you enjoyed this one, the point of these early chapters really is to sort of establish Steven's relationships with the other gems as well as to see up some early intrigue. I really did enjoy writing Lapis in this, considering Blue Pearl is a different character than CG Pearl, consider Lapis really a fusion of Pearl and Amethyst, in terms of roles if not personality.**

 **Anywho, please consider leaving a review, a follow and a favorite if you enjoyed. Constructive Criticism is always welcome.**

 **And of course, don't worry. We will back to the Lunar Sea Spire.**

 **With a ton of love and respect and affection,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


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